Thursday 16th May was Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Ironically, it was one of the worst days on my Twitter timeline for finding pictures with added image descriptions, which made it a very wearing experience. But it prompted me to think about the advances in technology since I last wrote a post about how to add image descriptions. And, since very few people add descriptions, it’s worth reminding everyone of how this system operates, as well as providing an update on what technology can and cannot achieve.

First of all, there are a lot of blind and partially sighted people who use smartphones to access social media. Their screen reader apps can read Tweets, but are stuck when it comes to pictures. To help them, Twitter came up with a rather poorly thought out system to allow users to add descriptions to explain what their photos show.

So, a quick recap of how to set this up. It does vary slightly depending on what sort of device you use to access Twitter, but specific instructions can be found in Twitter Help. As a rule, go to your Twitter Settings, then Accessibility, then scroll down to a tick box to enable Image Descriptions. Note: the precise wording may vary depending on your device.

Once enabled, each time you add a picture, there should be an extra box marked something like, "Add Image Description". Click this, then you should see an extra text box which you can use to explain the picture. Type the description, click "Apply", then tweet as normal. You won’t see this extra text (known as Alt Text) once you’ve posted the tweet, but Screen Readers will detect it and read it aloud to visually impaired people (VIPs).

I know some people claim they are far too busy to spend an extra few seconds typing a description but, quite honestly, that’s not a great excuse. I’m fairly sure those same people didn’t grumble about the extra time it took them to type a longer message when Twitter expanded its character limit from 140 to 280.

Twitter’s system is not great in that it relies on people remembering to use it. Many VIPs have been asking them to make it a default setting with the Alt Text screen appearing automatically as soon as a picture is added but, thus far, Twitter have ignored these requests. In the past year, however, other technology improvements mean that many (but not all ) visually impaired people have an extra tool in their VI kit. Microsoft’s SeeingAI app can now scan pictures within Twitter and explain what they show. SeeingAI is, however, only available on Apple devices, but there is an Android app called (I think) Envision which I have heard does a similar thing. VI Tweeters can also send a tweet to @Describot and receive a reply explaining the contents of a picture.

Whichever system the BIP uses, it’s not as great as it sounds. SeeingAI is generally very good at reading the text contained within a picture, although it struggles with copies of newspapers which are laid out in columns. It also has a facial recognition feature which often explains who is in the picture if the person is well known. What it does not tell you is what that person is doing other than vague comments like "Sitting at a desk" or "Smiling at the camera". It’s better than nothing, but the scans also have spectacular failures. I recently scanned a picture which was, I am told, of the audience at the Scottish Tory Party Conference. My scan said it was "Probably a bunch of brightly coloured flowers", and I’ve had another one where a shot of a marching crowd at an All Under One Banner event was described as "Probably some people with skis on top of a building". With feedback like that, it’s no wonder image descriptions remain vital for understanding.

Some people worry about how to describe their photo, but it’s not that difficult. Anything is better than nothing, but if the picture contains text, then a short note explaining the context should suffice. For example, if you post a picture of a Tweet by Andy Murray, then the description could simply say, "Tweet by Andy Murray". You don’t need to re-write the text of the tweet because the scan should detect it, but at least a VIP knows what the picture shows and can scan it if they wish to know more.

For more visual images, more detail is very helpful, and it’s really a case of, "Say what you see". So, you could explain a picture as, "A woman reading a magazine", which provides the basic context, or you could expand it a bit and say, "A young woman sitting at a table in a coffee shop. She’s reading a copy of the iScot magazine. She has long, dark hair and is wearing spectacles. it’s really up to you how much you type, but try to think how you would describe the picture if you were speaking to someone over the phone and telling them about it.

Finally, please add image descriptions. There are a lot of people I follow who still refuse to do so. I’m often tempted to unfollow and, in a couple of cases I have actually muted people who persist in posting undescribed pictures. It’s not something I like doing, but reading Twitter with a screen reader is a slow process at the best of times, and having my timeline full of stuff I can’t understand is extremely frustrating. Also, just because I seem to be the only visually impaired person banging on about this doesn’t mean there aren’t other VIPs who won’t see your Tweet. I know I have at least half a dozen VI followers. They may not all complain about the lack of image descriptions, but I know they all appreciate one when they find it.

Thanks if you’ve managed to read this far. If you have questions, just send me a Tweet or DM.

You have to feel sorry for pro-EU voters in England. Scots have the SNP and the Welsh have Plaid Cymru, but who on earth do English voters vote for in the upcoming EU elections?

The Lib Dems are trying to cash in on their pro-EU status, but most voters know that the Lib Dems are, in practice, Tory enablers who are quite happy to tell lies. Would you really want to vote for them?

That leaves the greens, but whether they can gather enough support on their limited resources is very doubtful. Hopefully enough English voters will put their cross against them anyway, but England has never shown much support for Green ideas, so I’m not holding out much hope.

And then, of course, there is the question of whether it matters anyway. Latest polling suggest the pro-Brexit parties have a healthy majority of support. Nigel Farage has shown that a great many people in England are attracted to his brand of xenophobic nationalism and will no doubt vote for him whichever party he represents. Labour continue to try to pretend they are not pro-Brexit in the hope of fooling some of their traditional supporters, while the Tories, although they are tanking in the polls, would no doubt see a victory for Farage as justification for forging ahead with Brexit no matter how disastrous it might prove for everyone except the very wealthy.

Judging from Farage’s television appearances over the past few days, he is adopting the same loud-mouthed, populist, fact free approach of Donald Trump and other, earlier fascists, and a large section of the English voting public is lapping it up.

How long before the majority of Scots recognise that becoming a normal country is the only sensible option?

Enough has been said and written about the SNP’s war on CyberNats and how the Unionist media has exploited the views expressed by some senior SNP politicians, but it’s the backlash from that sorry episode which reveals some interesting perspectives.

Anyone who has ever argued with a Unionist about independence knows that they all have this absolute conviction that anyone who is Yes is automatically a member of the SNP. Oddly, some Yessers also seem to be displaying this conviction. Yes, some people have announced they will be cancelling their membership of the SNP, but any gloating by Unionists over what they will no doubt portray as another civil war misses one major point. That is the very simple notion that you don’t need to be a member of the SNP to support Scotland becoming a normal country.

It’s also odd that a support which has been likened to a cult for blindly agreeing with any comment from the SNP leadership is now being mocked for … not blindly agreeing with comments from the SNP leadership.

It is a political reality that the SNP is the only vehicle through which our status as a normal nation can be achieved, but that doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with all their policies, nor with every comment made by SNP officials. Indeed, is there anyone who agrees with every single policy their Party stands for? OK, perhaps Scottish Tory voters have it easy there since their branch office only has one policy, but it’s not something which applies in normal circumstances.

But let’s hope the SNP get a grip soon. Some of the signals they are sending out are dismaying many of their most ardent supporters, and there is a growing feeling that some within the Party would prefer to maintain the status quo for the sake of their careers rather than risk everything on going for independence. I’m not sure this can be the whole truth since failing to push for independence would surely see the demise of the Party. Nevertheless, they really need to up their game when it comes to denouncing media misrepresentation, and they ought to display a bit more official support for things like the All Under One Banner marches because this would go a long way to appeasing the grumblers. It wouldn’t even need to be much more than an official comment that it is nice to see such a demand for independence from the grass roots.

It is that failure to be more outspoken and the suggestions that some in the Party want to become part of the Westminster system which is annoying many in the grass roots support. But even those individuals who have resigned from the Party are not going to suddenly decide to vote NO in another indyref. That’s not how grass roots Yes operates.

There’s a lot of discontent among the Yes community online at the attitude of the SNP. Not only is there no official endorsement or even mention of the All Under One Banner marches, some senior representatives have spoken out against online abuse by CyberNats, resulting in gleeful headlines in the mainstream media about how disgusting and odious we are.

While making abusive comments should not be condoned, the headlines are now portraying every Yes person who ever posts anti-Union messages on Facebook or Twitter as being tarred with the same brush as the small minority of people who go out of their way to post abusive comments. It is also noticeable that the leading politicians within other parties make no effort at all to curb the abuse posted by supporters of the Union which can be every bit as disgusting and hurtful as any Yes campaigner has ever written. Any brief search on Twitter will easily confirm that, yet the media never seem to notice it.

But Whatboutery doesn’t help anyone, so let’s look at the real issue here. We see daily comments from Unionist politicians which are highly misleading at best and sometimes downright lies. Yet the SNP’s own media unit never challenges these misrepresentations. We must ask why not? Few journalists are ever going to challenge a Unionist politician no matter how much drivel they spout, yet the task of rebutting their misrepresentations is left to individual Yes supporters and, of course, websites like Wings Over Scotland and Wee Ginger Dug. There is no rebuttal from the SNP at all. Indeed, they seem determined to distance themselves from those who are doing the job their own media unit should be doing.

When you add in the fact that SNP politicians were happy to talk about the anti-Brexit protest marches but will, with only a few exceptions, say nothing about the AUOB marches which are made in direct support of the SNP’s core policy, it is no wonder some Yessers are unhappy at the SNP’s stance.

To compound this apparent disinterest in grass roots support, we have senior members giving the mainstream media exactly the sort of story they want about CyberNats. This is playing into the hands of the unionist media and, however strongly they feel about unacceptable levels of abuse, it is a serious miscalculation to allow the media to portray all Indy supporters in this way, especially when Saturday’s march demonstrated, yet again, that the support is being given with genuine good humour. The media were at pains to portray the march as causing trouble which was referred to as a "Clash" with a counter-protest. This clash, from the reports of those who were actually at the march, consisted of a couple of dozen Union supporters shouting abuse of the sort the SNP apparently decry, with the Yes marchers smiling and waving back to them. It’s not exactly the scenario conjured by the word, "Clash".

Now, we all know that the SNP are the political vehicle through which Scotland’s status as a normal country will be achieved, but that doesn’t mean we follow them blindly like a cult. We can criticise them when we disagree with them, and on this occasion there is a lot of disagreement over their stance towards the grass roots support.

Whether or not you believe protest marches achieve anything at all, you can bet that the Unionists and the media would make a big song and dance if there were no such marches at all. They are already pushing very hard on the line that there is no public support for a second IndyRef, and if there were no marches, this would only add to their argument. If the marches continue to garner the level of support we have seen so far, at least we can point out that they are lying when they say there is no support.

So, while it must be said that anyone dishing out abusive comments online isn’t likely to persuade anyone to move from No to Yes, it must also be said that it really doesn’t help the cause of independence if the SNP are going to slag off a large section of their most active and vociferous support.

SNP MP Pete Wishart has announced that he is putting himself forward to replace John Bercow as Speaker of the House of Commons. This is a move which has disappointed a number of Yes supporters, including some who are SNP members, and it’s not difficult to understand why.

The SNP MPs who were elected in the General Election of 2015 stated that they were going to Westminster to settle up, not to settle down. Yet Pete Wishart, who has been an MP longer than most of his SNP colleagues, appears to be happy to become part of the Westminster system – a system which habitually works against Scotland’s interests. He may feel that his move could help break the mould, but history shows us that Westminster will not change.

The one thing SNP MPs have achieved above all in the past four years is to reveal the contempt in which they , and Scotland, are held by the vast majority of Westminster MPs, but their actual impact, other than putting up a good show, has been minimal. This is not their fault, because Westminster is a place where change is unwelcome. As far back as 1922, when Labour sent a host of radical MPs from Scotland to Westminster, they soon discovered that changing things was next to impossible. In the near century which has passed since then, Labour has settled down and become part of the problem.

Pete Wishart’s bid to become Speaker may be well-intentioned, but in the very unlikely event that he is selected, his ability to change things will be virtually non-existent. All he will do is become an integral part of the system. When around half the population of Scotland (and very possibly more depending on who you listen to) want Scotland to abandon Westminster and become a normal country, for one of the SNP’s own MPs to declare an intention to become more closely linked to the very establishment his supporters want nothing to do with seems an odd decision.

Not that I expect he will be selected in any case. The SNP is so detested by the Labour and Tory MPs that it is very unlikely he will ever gain enough support. Even so, his declaration of intent sends an unwelcome signal that he is happy to settle down rather than to settle up. That’s not the radical sort of message most Yes Supporters want to hear.

Nicola Sturgeon’s announcement on IndyRef2 didn’t exactly inspire a rush of ardent support. It was measured and pragmatic, and at least sets out some sort of framework, but has anything really changed?

The big concern is that playing by Westminster rules and humbly asking permission to hold another referendum is going to bring only one response. Whatever legislation the SNP are planning, it will produce nothing tangible if Theresa May or whoever replaces her as Brexiteer-in-chief, simply refuses to grant a Section 30 Order. The big question is whether Nicola Sturgeon has a plan as to what to do when that happens. Naturally, she is keeping that secret at the moment because it’s never a good idea to tell your opponents what your next move is going to be before they’ve committed themselves, but that doesn’t really bring us any closer to knowing what is going to happen.

So we need to wait and see. It’s not exactly a rousing cry, is it? But Nicola Sturgeon has clearly decided this patient approach is the one which will work, and the reality is that, for all that many in the Yes movement might disagree, it is the SNP who are in the driving seat when it comes to the major constitutional issue.

The one big positive we can take is that playing for time allows the Tories plenty of scope to convince undecided voters to switch to supporting Yes. Whether it’s May, Johnson or Gove, they are all dancing to Nigel Farage’s tune, and we know this is a path Scotland has rejected.

There’s been an announcement that Nicola Sturgeon will soon make an announcement about the announcement of IndyRef2. This ongoing refusal to bite the bullet and go for it has annoyed large sections of the Yes community, but it is easy to understand the reluctance when the polls refuse to shift. And if it is only the thought of Brexit which is putting some voters off, it is also easy to understand why the SNP leadership are reluctant to call for IndyRef2 until the outcome of Brexit is known.

Whether this strategy is the right one is debatable, and there are strong views being expressed both for and against. It seems, though, that we will need to be patient a little longer.

And that is an important point for Yessers who are members of the SNP to bear in mind. The cause of Scottish independence is much bigger than the SNP, but we must recognise that the SNP is the political vehicle through which independence will be gained. They’ve also been around for a long time. If you are frustrated now, imagine how previous generations have felt when, as a minority party, the SNP were a voice in the wilderness. You may disagree with the current policy, but saying you are finished supporting them is only going to make things more difficult. Where else will you lend your support? Yes, the Greens are pro-indy, but are they large enough to drive the indy movement?

And even if Nicola Sturgeon has got this very wrong, and even if there is no IndyRef2 or it produces another No result, that should not end the desire for Scotland to become a normal country. Whatever the polls say, whatever the media tells us, the mood in the country is changing, and the desire to escape the madness of the UK is growing.

So the Brexit chaos continues, with some journalists triumphantly proclaiming that a No Deal crash out has been prevented thanks to Westminster passing a law saying so. The only flaw in this suggestion is that the EU have not actually agreed to extend the Brexit deadline, so Westminster may as well have passed a law saying that it has banned rainfall. Of course, the situation may have changed by the time you read this, or even by the time I’ve written it.

As for what might actually happen despite the delusions of many in the UK media, a short extension to the Brexit deadline seems unlikely since the EU have always been pretty consistent in their stance, and there is no reason for them to extend the hassle for a couple of months when nothing is likely to change. So we may see an offer of a longer extension which will put Theresa May in a real tough spot as she tries to satisfy the various factions within the Tory Party.

Meanwhile, the media continue to promote Mark Francois on the grounds that he says a lot of ridiculous things so makes for good TV. That, and the fact that he’s not yet been tainted by association with the Leave EU campaign like Boris Johnson. How long before Francois is being touted as a potential Prime Minister? Don’t laugh. It may sound as ridiculous as the man himself, but nothing is impossible in Ruritania. Sorry, I meant the UK. I keep making that mistake.

Francois has stated that, if the UK remains in the EU, it will behave like Perfidious Albion on speed. this has led some people to observe that he might not know what perfidious means, but I think he knows precisely what it means. The only real question is whether the EU would actually notice any difference.

So the UK Parliament is no nearer a resolution on Brexit. Is anyone surprised? Having voted against NO Deal, they then rejected a solution which would have seen Article 50 revoked in the event that no other decision could be reached – and they rejected it. That was the Bain principle at work there, although in fairness, Theresa May would probably have ignored the indicative vote even if it had been passed unanimously.

Which leaves us, as I’ve long feared and expected, facing a hard Brexit in ten days.

It must be said that Nicola Sturgeon has tried hard to save the UK from itself, but the patient has almost expired and only a miracle will resuscitate it now. IndyRef2 is the only viable solution for Scotland. The big question is whether she has left it too late.

Accents are in the news, it seems. An advertisement highlighting that Scotland is an open and inclusive country has come in for some criticism which includes people having a dig at the narrator’s accent.

Sadly, it seems this type of discrimination will not go away. Not only do some people deride languages they cannot understand, they also mock people who speak with a different accent. Does it never occur to them that the people they are mocking might think that they, in turn, speak with an odd accent?

The way you speak is a product of your upbringing and social environment. Language is a communication tool and, as long as you are able to communicate clearly and politely, then nobody should make fun of you simply because of the way you pronounce words. In a country like Scotland where accents can alter within the space of a few miles, Accentism should be as socially unacceptable as any other form of discrimination.

The other criticism of the advertisement is almost as bizarre. It seems that at least one person was upset because she felt that Scotland should not be advertising how welcoming it is when we have our share of idiots, bigots and people with unsavoury social attitudes. Now, it is true that Scotland is no exception when it comes to having a section of society who behave in a manner which most of us would view with distaste if not abhorrence. Witness, for example, the events after the Old Firm match yesterday. But, and it is an important but, nobody ever attracted business by putting out advertisements telling the world how crap they are. And if we are going to suspend any positive statements until all social ills have been solved, we are likely to have a long wait. Addressing unacceptable social behaviour is one of the remits of any Government, usually through law enforcement, but nobody can seriously expect any Government to parade its society’s problem areas when attempting to attract new immigrants or businesses. I’m afraid that’s just silly. And, on a weekend when we’ve seen fascists parading in London, to call a pro-Scottish advertisement "Peak Nationalism" is more than a little bit over the top.

But the really sad thing is that the current political climate in the UK has created such divisions within our society that even things like an advertisement can cause such controversy*. If only we lived in a normal country.

*I really don’t care whether you pronounce that CONtroversy with the emphasis on the first syllable, or conTROversy with the emphasis on the second syllable.

In some ways, it’s comforting to know that you can always rely on the Scottish media to plumb the depths of mediocrity. At a time when the UK is undergoing one of the greatest constitutional upheavals in its history, the Herald has headlined a story about Jonathon Shafi, a pro-Indy campaigner, saying that he will not vote SNP again because Nicola Sturgeon had her photograph taken cosying up to ex-Labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell.

What the Herald’s investigative journalism apparently failed to unearth was that Mr Shafi was involved with the people who established the political party Rise which was formed to campaign against the SNP. So it seems unlikely he would have voted for the SNP in any case, but he has managed to provide another SNPBad headline for the Unionist media, and they never miss a chance to ignore the bigger picture and focus on petty matters.

But is it petty to point out Nicola Sturgeon’s apparent willingness to campaign alongside a man who was one of the architects of the Iraq War? It must be admitted that Mr Shafi is not the only person to have stated this is a step too far for them.

Now, Yes supporters need to acknowledge that many of them have often pointed out that Better Together provided many examples of Labour politicians cosying up to Tories, the BNP and UKIP, so shouldn’t we condemn Nicola Sturgeon’s error of judgement? Is it not, after all, possible to campaign for something yet maintain a distance from others who might agree with you on that subject but with whom you do not wish to associate because of other policy matters on which you disagree? In an ideal world, it would be nice to maintain that moral high ground, but we should perhaps keep in mind that Nicola Sturgeon was taking a rare opportunity to speak to people who normally only hear her through the prism of the UK broadcast media. If she’d publicly snubbed Alistair Campbell that, too, would have provided media headlines. She obviously made a judgment call, deciding that being seen to campaign alongside him was the lesser of two evils. Whatever you think of that decision,

one thing that should be mentioned is that she was right to appear and speak at the rally. She gets few enough opportunities to deliver any sort of message to the wider UK public, so this was a good chance to let citizens from other areas of the UK hear her speak. Indeed, while the UK media has, unsurprisingly, paid her little attention, European media certainly noticed her presence and her speech. It’s also been noticed that Jeremy Corbyn was absent.

So, while having photos taken with Alistair Campbell may have been a mistake, and certainly provided the media with an excuse to run more SNPBad headlines, she was absolutely right to attend the march.

But wouldn’t it be nice if she would attend some pro-Indy marches in Scotland? Campaigning to stop Brexit is all very well, but she’s told us often enough that she will be making the positive case for Indy, yet we’re still waiting to hear it. Perhaps, just once, she could attend a pro-Indy march.

But, those grumbles aside, the main thing that struck me about people insisting that they would never vote SNP again because she was seen with Alistair Campbell is that their desire to see Scotland become a normal country cannot be all that strong. Yes, the greens are pro-Indy, but the reality is that, whatever you might think of their stance on individual policies or their strategy on Brexit, the SNP are the only political Party who can deliver Indy. So who are you going to vote for if not them? Voting Green in Holyrood elections is all well and good, but if a UK General Election is called, the First Past The Post voting system means there really is only one choice for Yes supporters.

Let’s face it, we need independence soon. Once we’ve got that, people can vote for any Party they like in the Scottish Parliament. But that’s for the future. for the present, we need to support the SNP even if we don’t like some of the things Nicola Sturgeon does or does not do.

With the countdown to Brexit now being measured in days, things are as unclear as ever despite the dramatic events yesterday. John Bercow’s decision to block a third vote on Theresa May’s deal unless she brings back something that is materially different has thrown everything into even more confusion.

It raises a number of questions, not least of which is why Scotland’s fate is being determined, not by a bunch of dinosaur deniers from Northern Ireland, but why a precedent from 1604, before the act of Union? Whether you agree that the Speaker has made the correct decision or not, it seems absurd that the unwritten constitution of one nation can be applied to all the countries of the united Kingdom. If nothing else, this does at least confirm what many have been saying – that Westminster is England’s Parliament; it is not the Parliament of a truly united kingdom.

As to what effect it will have, that still remains in doubt. The default position is still that the UK will crash out of the EU without a deal on 29th March. Or, at least, that is the position at time of writing this. Who knows what will have happened by the time you read it?

May’s choices now seem to be (1) to ask for an extension to Article 50, (2) to revoke Article 50, or (3) to go ahead with crashing out on 29th March.

The EU have already said that they are not inclined to grant an extension unless there is a specific reason for it. A General Election might count, as would a decision to hold a second Referendum, but neither of those things seems high on the Tories’ agenda at the moment.

As for revoking Article 50, Theresa May has shown such stubbornness over the past couple of years, it’s hard to see her doing this at such a late stage, especially as the new tax avoidance laws will come into effect very soon, thus creating huge problems for lots of Tories and Tory Party donors if the UK remains part of the EU.

Which puts us back with the default option of a disastrous crash out. John Bercow may have saved us the unedifying spectacle of MPs changing their minds as a result of being offered bribes of one sort or another, but his decision hasn’t altered the countdown to catastrophe. Theresa May is the only one who can do that, and she shows no signs of doing so.

So Nicola Sturgeon will need to implement whatever plan she has pretty soon. I really do hope it’s a good one.

During the IndyRef campaign of 2014, a common claim by those who supported Better Together was that Yes supporters were letting their hearts rule their heads. Support for Scottish independence was, they asserted, a matter of belief, not reason, and we were likened to a cult.

How things have changed. As with so many of the claims made in 2014, this one has turned out to be the exact opposite of the current state of affairs. Despite Brexit, despite the scrapping of the Sewell Convention, despite the Power Grab, the Hostile Environment and the regular abuse directed at SNP MPs in the House of Commons, there are still many Scots who prefer to stick with the UK rather than take control of their own future.

You can point out all the ways Scotland has been ignored and exploited, you can point out the disaster awaiting us when Brexit bites, you can point out the fall in the value of sterling, cite the number of businesses closing down or relocating, and yet there are still those who will refuse to believe that Scotland becoming a normal country would be preferable. Many of these people can see what is coming, yet their attachment to the UK is so great that they cannot bring themselves to abandon it no matter what might happen.

In some ways you cannot blame them. The British state long ago mastered the art of propaganda through the media and education system, and a sense of Britishness has been embedded in many people’s minds. Breaking that bond is, for some, simply not possible no matter whether they can see the problems sticking with the UK will bring. Reason no longer applies; it is blind faith and belief in the UK that will determine how they will vote in a second IndyRef.

I have always supported Nicola Sturgeon’s apparent prevarication over calling IndyRef2 on the basis that to call for this before the outcome of Brexit is known would be to undermine the campaign. Asking voters to decide on such an important constitutional matter when the consequences of one side of the equation are not known would mean that many wavering voters might yet be convinced to stick with the devil they know. Much as ardent Yes supporters might shake their heads in bewilderment that so many of our fellow Scots could believe staying as part of the UK is as good as it gets, we need to recognise that many of them are subjected to the mainstream media version of events and can therefore be susceptible to arguments which could persuade them to vote against becoming citizens of a normal country.

The problem now, of course, is that Westminster has dithered and blundered for so long that it is almost certainly too late for IndyRef2 to save us from Brexit. Both the Tories and Corbyn’s Labour seem determined to leave the EU no matter what, and once we are out of the EU, our position becomes potentially very difficult to remedy. In my gloomier thoughts, I see Holyrood being dissolved as soon as Brexit has taken effect, and all chances of independence being crushed. It is not an appealing prospect at all, and I sincerely hope Nicola Sturgeon has planned for all eventualities.

Yet her decision to delay calling for IndyRef2 still has some merit because, against all expectation, there are now rumours that Labour will support a second referendum on EU membership. Quite what the terms of that referendum will be remains to be seen and, quite honestly, I am not convinced it will actually happen anyway. If it does, though, the campaign will be very interesting.

For example, how will people like Ruth Davidson and David Mundell line up? They were in favour of remaining part of the EU until ordered to change their minds once Theresa May had decided to go all out for Brexit. Can they flip flop once again? Well, they are Tories, so maintaining a consistent position isn’t exactly their strong point, but even the dimmest voter would surely realise how flawed their position would be if they took the Remain side once again. More likely is that they would support Theresa May’s fudge of a deal in order to preserve their positions within the Tory hierarchy, but again that leaves them open to questions about why they no longer support remaining in the EU. Not that many journalists are likely to ask them tough questions, of course, but it would provide ammunition for those of us who want to remain in the EU.

As for Scottish Labour, would they support voting to remain if it meant siding with the SNP? Would we see an exception to the Bain doctrine? That would set a nice precedent.

As for the SNP, they would need to tread a careful line. There is no doubt that a hard Brexit greatly enhances the cause of Scottish independence, but it would cause significant harm to our country and our people in the short term. Refusing to take part in a second EU referendum would also leave them open to accusations of putting Indy above all else. And, quite frankly, Brexit is the immediate danger, so I think they would need to support the EU referendum with a very strong caveat that a similar result to last time would result in IndyRef2.

Then there is the question of whether Scots would turn out to vote in a re-run of the EU referendum. If remaining in the EU is an option on the ballot paper – and that’s by no means certain – then I think we have no choice. We would need to send a very strong signal to Westminster that Scotland wants to remain in the EU. If we boycott the vote and the result goes against us, the Tories will gleefully proclaim that Scotland doesn’t care about the EU and wants to stick with the UK no matter what. We must avoid that scenario at all costs, which is why I believe it is important that the SNP make it clear that a strong Remain vote in Scotland would provide yet another mandate for IndyRef2 if England still votes to drag us out of the EU against our will.

But, hypothetically, what happens if there is a second EU referendum and England votes to remain? The immediate threat of Brexit will hopefully be removed, which will be a great relief to many people. It does not, however, mean that IndyRef2 needs to be shelved. There is more than enough evidence from the past couple of years to demonstrate that Westminster does not have Scotland’s best interests at heart. Whether it be the derisory treatment of the Sewell Convention, the string of broken promises, the Windrush scandal, the Hostile Environment, the deportation of foreign nationals, the economic slump, or the scorn dished out to SNP MPs in the House of Commons, surely the Yes campaign would be able to demonstrate why Scotland needs to become a normal country. Let’s just hope we get the chance to wage that campaign. If there is no second EU referendum and Brexit goes ahead, it may actually delay the chances of independence if the Tories get their act together quickly enough to seize full control of Scotland.

There doesn’t seem to be a good scenario here at all, but scrapping Brexit and then relaunching a Yes campaign seems the lesser of two evils. Unless Nicola Sturgeon has a cunning plan.

Many in the Yes community are growing increasingly frustrated that IndyRef2 has still not been called. Indeed, some in the SNP seem to believe that we should wait several years before making another attempt, and this has not gone down well.

Nicola Sturgeon’s policy of waiting to see what happens with Brexit is eminently sensible because people who don’t know what they are voting for (or against) will be difficult to persuade. However, it is increasingly clear that Theresa May’s tactic is to constantly delay so that the UK crashes out of the EU at the end of March. Unfortunately, while this is the most likely scenario, there remains some possibility of an Article 50 extension, a fudged deal or even (although this is remote) a chance Brexit will be cancelled. This makes it very difficult for Nicola Sturgeon to call IndyRef2 because nobody yet knows for certain what Brexit it going to bring.

The danger in waiting for clarity is that it may be too late by the time a decision is made. If Scotland is officially dragged out of the EU, if the UK Government uses emergency powers to impose martial law, dissolve the Scottish Parliament and take full control of Scotland, independence will remain a distant, unattainable dream.

Some might ask whether the UK Government would really go that far, but that is the wrong question. What we should be asking is what would prevent them from going that far? They certainly seem to have few cares about the social implications of many of their policies. Cuts to disability welfare, Universal credit, the Hostile Environment, Austerity, the creation of a low-pay economy and many others have failed to generate any swing in public opinion. The English electorate will continue to vote Tory, so they have no reason to believe they cannot do pretty much as they want. In spite of the internal rifts within the Tory Party itself, there is no real opposition to their rule, and they have demonstrated through their willingness to take the Scottish Government to court that they do not respect devolution at all. When you add in the well documented issue of the need for the UK to retain Scotland’s natural resources, it is hard to see why they would not want to seize full control.

Yet the polls on independence refuse to budge, providing a reason for the more cautious SNP politicians to play down IndyRef2, while the wider Yes community is clamouring that it will soon be too late.

It is almost certainly too late to hope that our EU membership can be retained, but perhaps it will require the actual shock of Brexit to wake people up. Far too many are simply fed up of the constant Brexit news, but that is how the UK Government operates. They delay, produce meaningless slogans and jargon, and do so in the knowledge that the majority of the population, fed by a compliant media, will simply shrug and get on with their lives. Perhaps when food and medicines run out, when the NHS collapses, when travelling abroad becomes a nightmare, then people will suddenly realise what all the fuss has been about. If that is what the Scottish Government is waiting for, it is a dangerous strategy.

But before we get too depressed about what might happen in a few weeks, we should not forget that this is the most inept, incompetent and bungling UK Government in living memory. Perhaps Nicola Sturgeon and her team have looked at all the possible scenarios and devised plans to counter them. I sincerely hope so, because time has almost run out. Something must happen soon, and the Scottish Government needs to be ready for it.

There seem to be only two arguments left for the Unionists. First is the one about Scottish independence obviously being too difficult because look at the mess we’ve made of Brexit; the second is the level of trade between Scotland and RUK.

What these two arguments have in common is that they are both designed to mislead by making false comparisons.

First of all, dissolving the Union will certainly pose challenges, but they are far from insurmountable. Plenty of nations have become independent, and over 50 have, in fact, become independent from the UK. It may have taken them a little time to establish all the institutions they required, but they have all managed it. Some, of course, remain poverty-stricken because of their own internal political feuds, but many are doing perfectly well. Given Scotland’s rich resources and the fact that we already have many of our own institutions, we should certainly be able to cope better than most when it comes to setting up a new nation.

Brexit is a false comparison because it is a highly complex trade and finance union into which the UK has become enmeshed. Separating out trade quotas from hundreds of trade deals is extremely complex, and issues over access to the single market and currency union are very complicated because of the Irish and Gibraltar border situations. The requirements of these border deals were always incompatible with ending Freedom of Movement, and anyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention knew this right from the start. Brexit is a shambles because of the clash between ideology and reality. Scottish independence will certainly require some negotiations, but they will not be nearly as complex as Brexit as many of the issues, such as identifying Scottish tax payers, a central Bank, a Stock Exchange, legal and education systems, NHS and other emergency services are already either in place or in hand.

As for the trade war claims and the level of exports, Craig Dalzell has already done an excellent job of pointing out that there is far more to the headline figures than meets the eye. In fact, were it not for the imbalance in the Scottish economy, with financial services being such a huge part, the situation would be very different. In most areas, if the figures are accurate, Scotland exports more to the rest of the world than it does to the UK. And a large part of the exports we do make to the UK are things like electricity, gas, whisky and food. Whatever bluster they put up, it’s hard to see the people of England refusing to import any of those things, especially as they barely generate sufficient power for their own needs as it is. Of course, we cannot discount the fact that Westminster may make a stupid decision which would harm the people of England. After all, they’ve already done that a few times, but there are another couple of reasons why this threat of reliance on exports to England is mere bluff.

For one thing, as many people have pointed out, the UK has never refused to trade with any of its former colonies except in a few instances like South Africa during the apartheid era, so why should they refuse to trade with Scotland?

Then there is the final point that, assuming an independent Scotland remains within or re-joins the EU, then England will have no option but to trade with us unless they decide they do not want to trade with any EU member state at all. The backing the EU have provided to Ireland over the past couple of years should be evidence enough that the EU will not countenance one of its member states being discriminated against when it comes to trade deals. There may well be a hard border in place, although Westminster’s ability to devise a workable system seems pretty poor. But, as things stand with Brexit, we are going to have a hard border with the EU in a couple of months and, if most sectors within our economy actually export more to the EU and the wider world than they do with England, that’s going to be more damaging than a hard border between Scotland and England.

So it’s all just bluff and bluster as you would expect, with the sense of British exceptionalism driving most of the rhetoric. The comments being made are, as many have pointed out, similar to those made by abusive partners, threatening all sorts of things if the other party leaves, but taking advantage of them if they remain. That’s the UK in a nutshell.

So don’t fall for it, and be ready when people who rely on the mainstream media for their news repeat the mantras as if they are true. They are not.

UK politics is a farce, but it’s not funny. What else can you say about the ludicrous events which took place in the House of Commons? They’ve wasted a day to come up with the imbecilic decisions that Parliament should not have the power to extend Article 50 but that they do have the power to tell Theresa May to go back to the EU to renegotiate their Withdrawal Agreement. Their truly moronic idea is to remove the Irish backstop and replace it with "Other Arrangements".

What are these other arrangements, you might well ask. But you won’t get an answer because nobody knows.

It is quite pathetic that grown adults should behave in this way. The EU has consistently said the deal will not be renegotiated and that the Irish backstop cannot be removed. All that Westminster has achieved is to show the world that they are utterly divorced from reality and completely untrustworthy when it comes to negotiating deals. That won’t have been missed by any of the countries the UK wants to do trade deals with.

Naturally, most voices in the mainstream media have been trumpeting a great triumph for Theresa May despite the fact that she may as well go back to the EU and demand a herd of unicorns for all the good it will do.

And so more time is wasted and we lurch towards a No Deal crash out of the EU, with all the horrendous implications that brings.

Nicola Sturgeon has done the sensible thing up to now, waiting to see what the outcome of the Brexit negotiations is before calling IndyRef2. There is, after all, no point in asking the Scottish people to go into another referendum when they don’t know what the choices are. We know that far too many Scots are afraid of their nation becoming a normal country, and leaving one half of the equation vague will only allow those people to cling to their dream of what they think the UK is.

But time is running out. Even if we vote Yes now, we will effectively be out of the EU come the end of March. Our position then will require careful negotiation with the EU, although a sort of temporary associate membership may well be on the cards.

Still, we cannot wait much longer or it will be too late. The very existence of the Holyrood Parliament is at risk if we allow ourselves to be dragged out of the EU and left to the tender mercies of the Tories.

The next few weeks will be crucial. I fully expect May to refuse a section 30 order because she knows she can’t afford to lose Scotland, so I sincerely hope Nicola Sturgeon has thought this through and come up with a plan. Whether it is an advisory referendum or a simple dissolution of the Treaty of Union, we are rapidly approaching the cliff edge and need to do something soon.

And while we wait for the decision, we should all start stocking up on food and medicines if we can, because Brexit is going to hit hard when it happens.

It seems almost inevitable that we are heading for the hardest of hard Brexits with no deal agreed between the UK and the EU. There is always a slim hope that something dramatic will happen and the UK’s triggering of Article 50 will be revoked, but I am not confident about this at all. Theresa May seems intent on crashing out of the EU no matter the consequences. All her talk of renegotiating or tweaking her deal is just so much camouflage. The EU have made it clear that there will be no further negotiations, and her constant delays and obfuscations seem designed only to run down the ticking clock until there is nothing left but to crash out of the EU.

The big worry is why she appears to be oblivious to those consequences. The situation in Ireland will become extremely serious, with Scotland not far behind in the constitutional arena.

It cannot be that May and her colleagues are oblivious to what might happen in Ireland and Scotland. The break-up of their precious Union seems almost inevitable if they continue down the path of constantly delaying debates and refusing to discuss the issues in a sensible manner. Time is rapidly running out, and the choices are now very stark.

So the question is why are they doing this? Are they prepared to risk an outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland? Are they prepared to see a united Ireland and an independent Scotland? Are they prepared to see Wales agitate for independence as well?

It is easy to take the view that the Tories are so incompetent that they have no plans beyond how to remain in power for another day, but can we ignore the other possibility? Perhaps the abolition of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly are top of their list of actions to be taken post-Brexit. Perhaps the troops who are on standby to ensure there is no outbreak of civil disobedience when food and medicines run out have also been making contingency plans to keep Northern Ireland and Scotland in the UK by dint of military occupation.

OK, that’s a very pessimistic view, but history shows that Westminster is only too ready to deploy troops to get its own way, and the fact that Theresa May is charging towards a hard Brexit with apparently no concern about the break-up of the UK does make me worry.

I sincerely hope the current fiasco is due to the Tories’ utter incompetence, but let’s hope Nicola Sturgeon has planned for every eventuality because we need to escape this madness.

Is your nation suffering from feelings of loneliness and isolation? Do you feel your neighbours dislike you? Do you want to create a precious union to bolster your feelings of superiority? Here’s how to do it.

Step 3. Make sure you extract all the wealth from your new partner so you can demonstrate how poor and inadequate they are. This will help persuade them that they cannot survive without your benevolent control.

it’s as simple as that.

If you want to be really adventurous and create precious unions with countries all around the world, all you need to do is build a navy to transport your army, then repeat steps 2 and 3 above.

This method has been tried and tested by successive Westminster Governments over several centuries and is recognised all around the world as a proven way to create precious unions.**

*As an alternative, you can try offering bribes to politicians in the country of your choice so they vote themselves out of power and hand control to you, but always be sure to have your bribes backed up by the threat of military invasion.

**At some point, you may need to dissolve the precious union if it becomes more trouble than it is worth. If the natives do become restless, use strong military action to suppress revolt until you have managed to extract everything worthwhile before ceding control back.

It’s Christmas, so let’s be charitable. The saga of the Gatwick drones continues to bemuse onlookers as, after shutting down the airport, deploying the Army, arresting two people whose identities were discovered by the media, then releasing them without charge, the Police now say it is possible there were no drones at all.

But, to be fair, if the Police and Gatwick authorities were told that drones had been seen over the airport and had done nothing at all, they would have been heavily criticised had any accident occurred. They were in a bit of a no win situation. Whether they handled that situation well is another matter entirely, but the whole saga is in keeping with the ongoing mess that is the UK today. NO country is immune to issues of mechanical or human failure. The weather can cause major problems for any nation on Earth, some being more badly affected than others, but only the UK seems able to create a crisis out of … well, just about anything. The way things are going, 2019 probably won’t get any better.

Except for viewers in Scotland who, hopefully, will have their own programme.

Here’s wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and an Independent New Year!

There is so much happening in Westminster thanks to the chaos of Brexit and the sheer incompetence and ineptitude of both main Parties, that writing any comment on events is almost a waste of time since it will be out of date before anyone gets a chance to read it.

So, putting aside for the moment the happy news that the UK Government is planning to put troops on the streets to quell any civil disorder, I thought it would be worth taking a quick look at something that does remain constant.

This week, SNP leader Ian Blackford was greeted with a cry of "Go back to Skye!" when he stood to make a speech. This, of course, was only banter, so we shouldn’t get too upset about it. Unless you compare it to how a cry of "Go back to Pakistan!" would have been viewed if directed at someone from a Pakistani heritage. When you view it like that, there can be little doubt that the comment contains undertones of racism at the very least.

But we shouldn’t get upset because it’s only banter. It’s the sort of banter which has been directed at the Scots, Irish and Welsh for years, so why get upset about it now?

Quite frankly, we should get upset about it. This sort of comment is the kind of casual racism which many people in England don’t even realise they are guilty of. Raised on a diet of British exceptionalism, they are taught to disdain anyone who either is not British or, if living within the British Isles, does not self-identify as British. This is the sort of culture which encourages such "banter" as that directed at Ian Blackford. And, as many people will have noticed, it is far from the worst comment made recently. We’ve had an SNP MP being told, "You’re a piece of shit." We’ve had the Irish being threatened with food shortages if they dare oppose the UK’s Brexit plans – such as they are, and we’ve heard that the Irish need to know their place. A couple of years ago, we even had a Tory MP explaining that an answer to the West Lothian question would be to follow Oliver Cromwell’s example, and have the Scots sold into slavery.

But it’s all just banter, isn’t it?

No, it’s not. Whether it comes from dreams of the Empire, from an inherent class snobbery, from being raised on British exceptionalism or from an inability to shake off a colonial attitude towards the other nations of the UK, it is simply not acceptable, so we shouldn’t accept it. In the 21st Century, we should be moving towards a society where discrimination of any kind is unacceptable. Such provisions are written into law even in the UK, and it’s about time Westminster caught up.

The only positive thing that can be said about this is that it provides the SNP with ammunition for IndyRef2. When that campaign starts, I hope they have a campaign advert compilation of all these comments and more. If that could be broadcast to the nation, anyone who believes that Scotland is a respected, equal partner in the Union would find that belief tested.

We are entering another mad week in UK politics. Rumours are that Theresa May might go back to Brussels for a better deal than the one she negotiated, but that sounds like just another Westminster delaying tactic. The EU isn’t going to budge, so there is no point going back again.

As to whether the deal passes in Westminster, the situation is so fraught that anything could happen. We might even see Brexit cancelled if enough MPs see sense.

Some pro-Indy folk are hoping Brexit goes ahead because it seriously improves the chances of Scotland becoming independent. I can understand why people may feel this way, but wishing harm on our neighbours simply to suit ourselves is not a good position to adopt.

Ideally, I’d like to see Brexit cancelled, then Scotland voting in IndyRef2 to become a normal country. That would nullify all the daft arguments about England refusing to trade with an independent Scotland because both countries would remain in the EU.

Of course, the danger in this approach is that some will argue that, with Brexit no longer a threat, there is no need for independence. This misses the point that a country governing itself is the fundamental issue in the Indy debate. Whether the UK is in the EU or not, Scotland being independent is the best course for our nation.

And, as someone on Twitter pointed out, just because someone threatens to throw you off a cliff then changes their mind is no good reason to stick around them. If they’ve threatened to do one mad thing, they are perfectly capable of doing plenty other harmful things. Indeed, England’s penchant for voting Tory has already done considerable harm to Scotland. Escaping that situation is the only sensible thing to do. It will take a while to set up a new nation, but others have managed it, and if our nearest neighbour remains a part of the EU, the transition will be that much easier.

The problem is, the UK is far from sensible, so who knows where we will be by the end of this week? They might try to delay and obfuscate because that is the British way, but a decision needs to be made soon. Let’s hope it’s the right one.

There is little doubt that the main opponent of Scottish independence is the UK media, in particular the BBC. While some people still trust this state broadcaster, events this week have shown yet again that there is a definite anti-indy agenda within the BBC. Whether this is deliberate or unconscious is beside the point.

This week saw Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, giving a speech about the damage Brexit will cause to Scotland. Yet anyone wanting to see the speech in its entirety needed to watch RT, the Russian news channel. Critics of RT will point out that RT is a Kremlin propaganda outlet and has a vested interest in promoting any event which criticises the UK Government. Given Nicola Sturgeon’s undisguised desire for Scotland to become a normal nation again, it is only natural that RT would want to give her publicity.

Yet, by the very same standards, why would the BBC and other UK broadcasters refuse to show her speech? If RT is demonstrating political bias by showing her speech, then we must assume that the BBC is showing a similar but opposite bias in refusing to screen the event. In other words, the BBC is not impartial; it is anti-independence. In fact, as has been documented on other pro-Indy sites, the BBC’s reporting of the First Minister’s speech was deliberately mocking.

Then we’ve had the so-called Vicargate scandal in which a woman who has appeared as an actor in several BBC programmes was a guest as an audience member putting forward a very strong pro-Brexit viewpoint. This has caused a fair bit of outrage on social media, and it would certainly be a scandal if the woman had been paid by the BBC to make her appearance and express particular views. However, it appears that this lady does indeed hold those views, so the problem is that the BBC misrepresented her by implying to viewers that she was a church minister. It turns out she is a self-appointed minister in her own "Church". Of course, she is entitled to hold any political views she wishes, but for the BBC not to disclose her true identity and background has left them open to criticism. It is similar to other audience members being specially selected in order to promote a certain view. The BBC may claim this represents some balance to the discussions, but it seems more than a little odd that their selected audience members always seem to put forward pro-Union, pro-Tory and pro-Brexit views. There may have been nothing untoward about the Newsnight audience selection, but the clumsy way the BBC have gone about it simply reinforces the view among many members of the public that the BBC has an agenda.

Then, as if having the state broadcaster against us isn’t enough, we had further evidence of the UK’s attitude towards Scottish independence when Theresa May made her flying visit to a Tory-supporting factory in Scotland where she was safely sealed away from meeting any members of the general public. Because The National, the only pro-indy newspaper, was not allowed to attend the press conference or ask any questions.

When you look at these events – and they are only a few of the most recent examples – it is hard to conclude anything except that the UK’s much-vaunted values of democracy and free speech are little more than a sham.

As this blog has said before, it is difficult to know what to do about this. The SNP have a media team, yet any criticism or rebuttal they issue is ignored by the media because it clashes with the pro-union agenda. This makes it very hard to get the word out to the wider public because pro-indy messages are simply ignored by the media.

Of course, the BBC and STV deny that there is any bias in spite of the constant evidence. We’ve seen Newsnight debates on Brexit with no representatives from outside England, we’ve seen reporters misrepresent the Brexit deal in an effort to conceal the betrayal of the Scottish fishing community who, despite being repeatedly let down by Tory broken promises, still proclaim their preference for Westminster rule, and have that opinion promoted by the BBC.

In England, many people are waking up to the bias in the reporting of news, with Radio 4 being heavily criticised for its pro-Brexit stance. In Scotland, we saw the bias in 2014 and it has not gone away. To think that there will be any change if and when IndyRef2 is called would be naïve in the extreme. If anything, we can expect even more bias, either by misrepresentation or omission. Social media may help counteract this to some extent by helping spread a different version of events, but we must be aware that not everyone in Scotland uses social media, and even if they do they may well be targeted with promoted stories tailored to influence them. The only way we can oppose the mainstream propaganda is by continuing to talk to people face to face and persuade them that the UK does not have their best interests at heart.

One of the points Brexiteers often make about the EU is that there are plans to create a European Army. This is, in Brexit philosophy, a bad thing since it would give foreigners the power to order British troops into wars the British Government may not want to be involved in.

Of course, the precise structure of any European Army is a matter of speculation, but it is difficult to see how such an all-encompassing organisation would be approved by the member states. It may well be that the idea is to further reinforce the EU view that wars within Europe should be a thing of the past and that if all European armies were combined into one, there would be no prospect of a further war. I don’t think this is a realistic view for a couple of reasons. Firstly, history shows us that civil wars within a single state are not exactly unknown, and various factions within the army of a state can take different sides within a conflict. Secondly, the very fact that an important part of the EU is that individual member states retain most of their sovereignty suggests that army units within the control of an EU-wide armed forces structure would still be answerable to their home Government.

In practical terms, any EU-wide defence force is likely to impose some sort of uniformity on things like procurement of equipment, with an over-arching command structure which would oversee the deployment of EU forces in any conflict. Whether it would lead to, say, Italian officers commanding a British regiment is something every member state would need to agree on before an EU army is created and, quite frankly, I’m not sure many of them would agree to such a thing. More likely, we would see something akin to the WW2 western Allies, where a command structure overlaid the individual armies, although an EU force may well want to impose more uniformity in terms of equipment used.

But the main thing that amuses me about the Brexiteer dislike of an EU army is that their arguments suggest they should really not support the involvement of Scottish regiments in the British Army. Scottish troops have been at the beck and call of Westminster for the past three centuries, often sent into conflicts which the Scottish public wanted no part of, and frequently suffering a higher casualty rate than other regiments. Of course, most Brexiteers see no anomaly in this since they view Scotland (and let’s not forget Wales and Northern Ireland) as mere regions of the UK. If what they fear is that an EU army would resemble the structure of the British Army, they surely cannot simultaneously insist that the British Army structure is perfectly normal and acceptable.

It’s a small point in the greater scheme of things but, quite frankly, I think Scottish regiments, plus a new Scottish Air Force and Navy, would be better off as part of an integrated EU defence force, if for no other reason that the EU is unlikely to attack other nations at the behest of the USA. As long as we remain part of the UK, our service men and women will be sent into war zones because attacking other nations is what the UK does. In its 311 year history, the UK has been at war (or at least in armed conflicts) almost continuously. That must be more than coincidence, and it makes me wonder whether what the Brexiteers really fear is the EU preventing them from making war. Some of the rhetoric we’ve heard from pro-Brexit politicians certainly indicates a liking for violence. Personally, I’d prefer to live in a country where going to war is seen as a last resort, not a first one.

It seems Project Fear has found a new angle thanks to Brexit. They’ve been pushing the "We can’t stop trading with our biggest partner" line for a while now, but one thing you can rely on is that Unionists will always find an angle, even when staring a calamity like Brexit in the face.

So what is this new line of attack? Well, it plays on people’s fear of change. What they are doing is pointing to the absolute chaos of Brexit, highlighting all the problems that it is going to cause and then saying, "So you see how difficult it would be for Scotland to break away from our precious Union?"

It’s an interesting scare tactic, since it relies on people accepting that they should stick with Brexit UK and all the shortages of food, medicine and jobs that will bring, rather than risk the possible downsides of Scottish independence.

Now, nobody is saying becoming a normal country will be plain sailing. Many parts of Scotland’s society are deeply intertwined with the rest of the UK, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that disentangling those aspects will be as difficult as Brexit.

This is because Scotland already has several of the attributes of a normal, independent country. We have our own legal and education systems, our own emergency services and our own Parliament to name a few.

Where work would be required is in establishing organisations to cover things like collection of taxes and social security, but we are already part way there. And there would be such things as setting up a Scottish equivalent of DVLA and other similar organisations. But the important thing to note is that, while these may take some time, there is no absolute cut-off point whereby the UK would stop providing these services as there is with exiting the Single Market and Customs Union. An independent Scotland could easily pay the UK to continue to run these operations until such time as Scottish equivalent organisations are set up.

Of course, we all know the UK will try to be uncooperative since its default position is to be spiteful and vindictive, but we should not forget that, in any negotiations about secession from the UK, Scotland has a lot of strong cards to play. England will continue to rely on Scottish power generation and on Scottish water, not to mention the important fact that the UK’s nuclear submarine base is in Scotland. If they want to maintain their status as a nuclear power, they are going to want to keep that going until they have built an alternative base. So there is incentive on both sides to negotiate in good faith.

And the really important bit is that Scotland could remain in the EU, thus entirely removing the need to set up agencies to monitor such things as approval of new medicines. Our laws already comply with EU regulations, and we wouldn’t need to negotiate any trade deals at all since the EU takes care of that. Our airports could continue to have planes flying, our truck drivers would find that their licences will allow them to continue to operate within the EU, and a whole host of Brexit issues vanish, especially those which will negatively impact the Scottish economy.

There will, of course, still be a great deal of work to be done. Our ports need to be upgraded because we need more direct transport links to Europe; we would need to establish our own armed forces and a network of embassies and consulates. Then there is the question of a Central Bank and which currency to use.

but all of these things, and others, are quite normal for a newly independent nation, and every other country that has become independent has had to face them. Are we really saying that Scots, who have given the world so many inventors and philosophical thinkers, are incapable of achieving what other nations have already shown can be done?

So let’s not be afraid of this new scare tactic. As usual, the Unionists are trying to compare two things which, while ostensibly similar, are actually quite different in many respects.

Outlaw King, a film about Robert the Bruce, was released on Netflix and in selected cinemas on Friday. Naturally, it’s gathered a lot of attention among the Yes community. While those who know about the actual history have, as usual, complained about the historical flaws, it must be said that these are relatively minor with the exception of having Edward II present at the final battle. While this grated a bit, we must remember that this is a film made to entertain, not a historical documentary, and the narrative of such films requires a final showdown. So, while I knew this part of the story was inaccurate, I can live with it.

The film was pretty good overall, and certainly more authentic to the period than Braveheart, although whether it will capture the public imagination in the way that Braveheart did remains to be seen.

The story was well told, showing how the character of Bruce developed. Yes, it was told from a very pro-Bruce perspective, but every film needs a hero, so that is to be expected.

But the real surprise about this film is that it shows just how little most Scots know of Scottish history. How many of us had heard of the Battle of Loudon Hill? We know the legend of the spider, but for most Scots that legend and the Battle of Bannockburn are pretty much all they know of Bruce. This highlights how, while we all learn about the Battle of Hastings and the Tudors, Scottish history is largely overlooked in the school curriculum. There is now some stuff on Wallace and Bruce, and Mary, Queen of Scots, usually gets a mention but, for far too many young Scots, that’s about it.

Let’s hope this situation changes. For the moment, I am going to follow the learning path I have always followed. Having seen the film, I am now going to read a couple of books on the genuine history of Robert the Bruce. I hope others will do the same because, instead of complaining that films are not historically accurate, we should applaud the film-makers for raising awareness and inspiring us to learn more.

This time of year has brought the usual arguments over the increasingly controversial poppy appeal. Many people are refusing to wear one, while others attempt to shame or even intimidate people into wearing one even if, in some cases, the people being targeted are not UK nationals.

Like most things, it should be a matter of personal choice. Wear a poppy if you want to; don’t wear one if you don’t want to. In either case, we should not attack anyone who disagrees with our own choice.

As for my own choice, I haven’t worn a poppy for several years now. There are a few reasons for this, but it is worth saying at the outset that my father served during WW2. He lost many friends and was severely wounded for his troubles. For that reason, Remembrance Day was always marked in our household because it was about remembering the fallen.

What disturbs me now about the use of the poppy is its increasing politicisation. Failing to wear a poppy is viewed by many as a criticism of the UK military, a slight on those who serve and essentially unpatriotic. Naturally, this hardens views among those who dislike the UK’s militaristic posturing. However, it is important to note that even the people who do not wear a poppy harbour no grudges against the men and women who serve in the armed forces. We are able to draw a clear distinction between those who serve and the political system which controls them. Indeed, many of those who join up do so out of dire economic necessity, only to find themselves transported half way around the world to fight in wars that have little to do with defending the UK’s borders, and then being tossed on a scrap heap once their term of service ends.

This, sadly, is very little different to what happened to the men who returned from the horror of WW1. Instead of a land fit for heroes, they came back to squalor and unemployment. One of the reasons the poppy appeal began was that the UK Government failed to support the survivors or the families of those who lost their lives. Since then, the UK has continued to promote charity as the best way to look after ex-service personnel, and the plight of many of those men and women is little short of scandalous. It is estimated that around 13,000 former soldiers are currently homeless, with many of them suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Instead of being given the support and care they need, they have been abandoned by the Government which sent them into danger.

When you add to this the disturbing situation that many of the events organised by, or with the blessing of, the Royal British Legion are sponsored by major arms manufacturers, the entire proposition behind the poppy appeal looks even more sordid. The organisation pledged to care for ex-service personnel willingly accepts sponsorship from companies who have a vested interest in creating wars where more young men and women are exposed to situations which may result in them being maimed or killed, thus perpetuating the need for a charity to ostensibly provide support for them. It is a vicious and unsavoury circle and, as so often, it is the ordinary men and women who joined up who suffer the most, while the rest of us are asked to salve our consciences by putting some money in a tin and wearing a plastic poppy.

I do not like this cynical exploitation of ordinary people, I do not like the jingoism which now surrounds the poppy as an emblem. Most of the war veterans I knew, including my father, wore the poppy as a mark of remembrance of their comrades. They were against war, yet the UK has been at war almost continuously throughout its 311 years of existence and shows little sign of losing its enthusiasm for military conflict.

As someone who has read extensively of the horrors of WW1, and whose father was wounded in WW2, I do not feel the need to wear a poppy to remember their sacrifice. There is not a single day of my life that passes when I do not remember them. I do not remember the glory or the victories, but the slaughter, the senseless loss of lives, the dreadful conditions they suffered and the virtual contempt with which many of them were treated by the Government when the wars ended.

And to answer the accusations that failing to donate to the poppy appeal means that it is those who need help who will suffer, I can answer that by saying that I have donated to a homeless charity so that perhaps some of the abandoned ex-service personnel can be helped. I think that is a better use of my money than the poppy appeal.

So, wear a poppy if you like. Or not, as you choose. But the important thing is that you should have a free choice.

Quite a few Yessers are annoyed that the Scottish Parliament has voted to support a so-called People’s vote on Brexit. This is understandable since we all know that it will be England that decides the outcome of any referendum no matter how Scotland votes. Calls for the SNP to declare IndyRef2 have not gone away, and the People’s Vote campaign is regarded by many as a distraction, with the added problem that a lot of people who are calling for a second referendum on Brexit simultaneously declare that there should be no second referendum on Scottish independence. Still, that’s the sort of hypocrisy we’ve got used to, and we should be able to rise above it by now.

As for the Scottish Parliament’s vote, it is probably not worth getting upset over since the chances of there being a second EURef are very remote indeed. The UK Government is determined to forge ahead with Brexit in order to avoid the EU’s anti-tax avoidance regulations and to give themselves more sweeping powers to control the UK and remove as many workers’ rights as they can.

So why would the Scottish Government support this latest vote? I believe the main reason is that they wish the world to see that they have taken every possible step to save the UK from the calamity of Brexit. If they can demonstrate to everyone that they have repeatedly tried and repeatedly been ignored or overruled, then it will be evident to everyone except the most extreme British Nationalists that calling IndyRef2 is the last resort. If they went straight to IndyRef2 they could well face accusations of jumping the gun and not exploring every other possibility. OK, the media will accuse them anyway, but the court of world opinion will not be so blinkered. Organisations such as the UN and, most especially, the EU, will have proof positive that the Scottish Government has exhausted all avenues in its attempts to be reasonable, and they will see precisely where the blame lies.

And if, against expectation, a second vote on Brexit is allowed and results in the UK seeing sense and voting to stay, all that does is delay IndyRef2 slightly. Our EU citizens’ rights will be protected, our economy sheltered a little from the ongoing disasters it faces, but the Scottish Government will still retain a mandate to call IndyRef2. The immediate threat will have been averted, but the example of how Westminster views Scotland will be all too evident.

But, as I say, a People’s Vote probably isn’t going to happen anyway, so this vote in the Scottish Parliament is simply the Scottish Government playing canny politics. It might not be too everyone’s liking, but it does actually strengthen their case when the inevitable happens. It also had the added benefit of once again showing up Labour’s ineptitude because almost all of their MSPs abstained on the vote, highlighting their increasing irrelevance to modern Scotland.

So let’s not get too upset. IndyRef2 cannot be called until we know what is going to happen with Brexit. NO matter how inevitable a crash out of the EU seems, there is always the faint chance that Westminster will see sense. And although leaving IndyRef2 until the last possible moment is a dangerous strategy from the point of view that Brexit will cause even more severe harm to our economy, it may be that it will take the shock of post-Brexit UK to convince more Scots that becoming a normal country is the sensible option.

So it turns out that Robert the Bruce might have been born in England. To which I can only respond, "so what?" If this was supposed to diminish his status in the eyes of supporters of Scottish independence, those who wish to spread this message have sadly misjudged what drives us.

Of course, the news is interesting historically. If anything, it shows that Bruce was a man of his times, descendant of a family from Flanders who rose within the Norman aristocracy in the centuries following the Norman Conquest of England, an event which led to the ever-acquisitive Normans extending their rule over most of the British Isles in their typically brutal fashion.

Bruce was a part of the elite who were just as concerned with power, privilege and status as today’s elite. He fought for King Edward of England and he fought against him, his loyalties generally determined by what was best for Bruce and his family, although a certain well known story suggests that he decided to continue the fight when it would have been easier to surrender. Of course, we don’t know the precise details behind what drove that decision, but it was an important one for both Bruce and Scotland.

It would perhaps be reading too much into his actions to suggest that he was a man of the people in the manner of William Wallace, but whatever drove him to fight for the crown of Scotland left an indelible mark on the nation and ensured that it was not absorbed into England in the way that Wales was.

So, wherever he was born, whatever his motivations, whether he was a decent human being or a power-hungry megalomaniac; none of these things really matter except in the sense that we gain some understanding of historical events. What matters is that Robert the Bruce preserved Scotland as an independent nation at a time when its existence was very much in doubt.

Nor should we forget the Declaration of Arbroath which was written several years after Bruce’s greatest victory at Bannockburn. In this momentous document, the lords and senior clergy of Scotland declared that the people (by which they probably meant themselves) had the right to remove a king who did not act in the best interests of the nation. It wasn’t what we would recognise as democracy, but it showed that the relationship between ruler and ruled in Scotland was very different to the manner in which Norman kings ruled England. We must assume that Bruce knew and understood this, even if the likelihood of the people exercising that power in the face of a monarch who commanded an army was remote in practice.

But the main thing is that, whatever the historical facts, when it boils down to it, we should regard Bruce in the same way as we should regard all our present-day Scots. It doesn’t matter where you come from, what matters is that you want to help us go where the nation wants to go.

The reaction to the news that Billy Connolly has admitted that he now sees independence for Scotland as the best route out of Brexit mayhem has been mixed to say the least. Some people have pointed to his former comments about those who support a normal Scotland, while others have suggested that promotion of his new book might lie behind his apparent conversion and that he may not be entirely sincere.

It is true that the Big Yin was scathing towards Yes supporters, and we know that Scots can bear a grudge for a considerable time. After all, none of us likes to be the subject of criticism, especially when it is expressed in harsh terms. But, while a hostile reaction to his comment is understandable, there are a few reasons why I think we need to welcome Billy Connolly’s statement.

First of all is the obvious one that, if and when IndyRef2 takes place, we need as many people to vote Yes as possible, so someone converting to our side should be welcomed, even if that person doesn’t actually live here for much of the year.

It is, of course, Connolly’s celebrity status which makes his comments newsworthy, so his residence is not as important as the possible effect his words might have. If someone who was so implacably opposed to Scotland becoming a normal country can change his mind, then perhaps we should make him all the more welcome because it takes a lot for people to alter their opinions and such a high profile switch of sides just might make others consider their opposition to independence in a fresh light.

The other point which is worth making also relates to Connolly’s celebrity status. He was far from alone among Scotland’s celebrities in speaking out against independence. If we respond to his claim that he has altered his opinion with cynicism and scorn, what message does that send to other high profile Scots who might be seriously considering making a similar statement? Might they not take the view that it is not worth switching to Yes because of the abuse from vile CyberNats? It would be nice to think that strong-minded individuals in the public eye would be accustomed to criticism and might still declare a change of mind because they appreciate the wider issues, but should we take the chance of alienating even one person by ridiculing or sneering at Connolly’s statement? If every vote counts, then we really should make an effort to show that we are better than that. Anger and scorn are the hallmarks of our opponents, and, however much we might remember previous comments by a new convert to Yes, we really ought to try to show that we are bigger than the pettiness of most Unionists.

So, whatever his motivation and however sincere he might be, I welcome the Big Yin to Yes, and hope that his example will encourage others to speak out in support of an independent Scotland.

During our recent trip to Munich, our group met with a bunch of young lads from Denmark. Between the beer drinking and singing, we had an interesting chat with them on a variety of subjects as we compared various aspects of our lives.

As you would expect, they all spoke good English, with one lad in particular being so fluent he even knew a lot of swear words and was keen to learn even more.

It came as a surprise for my son when this chap told him that he pays 45% tax. At first, my son thought this was terrible, until he learned that the social security available meant that, if the Danish lad had to give up work due to accident or ill health, he would continue to be paid an amount equivalent to his salary until his retirement age. I don’t know whether this is universal in Denmark or merely applies to this chap’s employer or industry, but it is a striking difference to the situation in the UK.

The Scandinavian model of high wage, high tax and high social benefits has long been admired by many people in the UK. This is just one example of the difference between how the UK operates and how other nations approach things. For anyone in the UK who faces having to give up work early due to, say, an accident or a degenerative disability, the option of receiving full pay until retirement age simply isn’t there. Instead, they face a life of scraping by on meagre social security payments or, in far too many cases, relying on food banks because the state offers them nothing.

I know it would not be possible for a newly independent Scotland to suddenly adopt the Scandinavian economic model, but it surely must be something to aim towards. Denmark, after all, has a population comparable to Scotland yet has few of the natural resources available to us. If they can do it, surely we can at least try.

The chat then moved, very briefly, onto politics. Brexit was mentioned.

For me, the most revealing part of the chat was when some of our group admitted to not knowing exactly where Copenhagen is when our new friend told us that was where he was from. His response was to laughingly say that we ought to know where it was since the British had attacked the city in 1807 and destroyed large portions of it.

Now, I knew about this because I had read a fictionalised account of the tragic war in a novel by Bernard Cornwell. Had it not been for that, however, I would have been just as ignorant as the rest of my group, none of whom knew anything about this event. For me, this was a classic example of the British education system glossing over unsavoury events in an effort to maintain the mirage of a benevolent Empire. The Danes know all about this attack and its dreadful consequences, yet I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in the UK who has learned about it from within the education system. It is simply ignored because it doesn’t fit the narrative.

Travel broadens the mind. Everyone in our group thoroughly enjoyed our short visit to Munich, and meeting people from other countries is always informative. Our brief encounter with these lovely lads from Denmark will, I hope, live in the memories of the younger members of our group and make them aware that there are different ways of doing things than the British way.

So Jeremy Corbyn has ruled out any sort of deal with the SNP which would see him become Prime Minister in a minority Government. This is precisely what Ed Milliband did, so perhaps it is no surprise. Part of the problem for Labour leaders is that the media in England have persuaded a large section of the population that the SNP hate the English, so any deal with them could be seen as a toxic betrayal of the English people, many of whom dread the thought that any other nation can exercise any sort of control over them. (Stop laughing at the back there!).

It briefly crossed my mind that another factor might be that Corbyn is so entrenched in the Westminster system that anything which disrupts the two-Party hegemony is automatically dismissed, but I think that is probably not the case. After all, we’ve seen coalitions in Westminster recently, and the DUP backing of the Tories shows that political expediency can lead to such deals. So the problem is not with support deals, but with the SNP.

Is Corbyn’s dismissal of the SNP simply another example of the Bain principle at work? Perhaps it is, but there could also be some logic behind it. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that another General election is called and that Labour would need the support of the SNP in order to form a Government under a confidence and supply arrangement. What would the SNP’s price for such a deal be? Agreeing to support a Labour Government for a full five year term would not be in the SNP’s best interests because another Holyrood election would take place before that term ends, and there is always the possibility that, if the UK Government has been stabilised by the SNP, many Scots voters would decide to support a Unionist Party in Holyrood, thus removing the current pro-Indy majority.

Another factor is that, thanks to EVEL, the support the SNP could provide would be limited, perhaps resulting in the Labour Government being unable to push through some of its policies in the face of united opposition from the other Parties.

And the big issue is that, if the SNP decide that holding another IndyRef is the price of their support, that puts Labour in a difficult position. As the ruling Party of Government, they would want to oppose Scottish independence, yet that would set them in direct opposition to the Party keeping them in power. And if the vote goes the way we hope it does, it would result in the collapse of the Labour Government as soon as the SNP left Westminster on Scotland regaining its status as a normal country.

So Corbyn probably has little to gain from agreeing to any sort of deal with the SNP. Yet, while his announcement has probably pleased a large section of his support, it has also added to the ammunition available to the SNP who now have yet another example of apparent scorn and dismissal from a Westminster Party. In pro-Indy eyes, Labour have again shown where their allegiance lies, and every example is another stepping stone for the Yes movement.

It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for Corbyn. Almost, but not quite.

Last week I had a short holiday break in Munich, visiting the Oktoberfest. It was a manic couple of days, although I can assure all readers that I was very well behaved and did not disgrace myself in any way at all.

This was my first trip abroad for a good few years, and it gave me a fresh chance to compare things with home. A couple of things stood out. I’m sure every visitor to Europe is aware of these, but it is always worth keeping them in mind.

First was the integrated transport system, with the same tickets being valid on trains, trams and buses. I only used the train twice and was very impressed. The seats may not be quite as comfortable as the ones we are used to, but they are perfectly fine. The trains were on time and ran smoothly, but the main thing was the audible station announcements during the journeys. These were made in German and in English. As a blind traveller, I found them extremely helpful, especially as they also advised which side of the train to alight from.

You could argue that Munich is a tourist hotspot and so having bilingual announcements is nothing special, but Scotland is a tourist hotspot yet it is only really in the last dozen years or so that audio announcements have become commonplace on our trains, and they still aren’t available on most buses. Even when they are made, they are only given in English, which isn’t very helpful to visitors from abroad.

Nor do our announcements usually explain which side of the train to alight from. It may seem obvious to sighted passengers but, as a blind passenger, I still need to be familiar with the stations to know which side the platform is on. Believe me, if you can’t see, scrabbling around for a button to open the doors and then discovering you are on the wrong side of the train can be a little stressful.

Of course, privatisation of public transport has created enormous difficulties in the UK. Comparison with Germany suggests that the UK has got it very wrong from a customer service point of view and, quite frankly, what other point of view should really count when it comes to public transport?

The second thing I need to mention is that traditional comment that nearly everyone we met spoke English to some extent. From the elderly hotel receptionist, to the men and women serving the drinks, to the lady in a souvenir stall who sold us T-shirts, it was quite embarrassing that I barely used my very limited German at all because most of them were very comfortable speaking English and more than a few of them were fluent.

Much has been said recently about the decline in foreign language learning in Scottish schools. This is one area where I really feel the Scottish Government needs to do something. Our lazy attitude towards learning foreign languages is a very British trait, and it’s not one we should be proud of. I hope the Scottish Government will do something to address this.

We did have a very interesting chat with a group of Danish lads who were so fluent in English they even knew plenty of swear words. I’ll write more about our conversation with them in a follow up post. For the moment, the only other thing to mention is that I wore a pair of saltire shades at the festival and was greeted by more than one friendly shout of “Scotland!". We were made to feel very welcome everywhere we went, and the trip must have been a success because every one of us wants to go back. Let’s hope Brexit doesn’t make that more difficult.

I’m not going to comment on the defamation case between Kezia Dugdale and Wings Over Scotland. That’s a matter for the courts, so I see no point in expressing an opinion on what might happen. However, I was very interested in some comments I saw online which were made in response to Kezia Dugdale’s remarks about the trustworthiness of the Labour Party.

As you would expect, many people responded with replies suggesting that Labour had been recognised as untrustworthy by a great many people some time ago, but there were also some very conciliatory replies urging Ms Dugdale to quit Labour and join the SNP, with many people telling her she would be very welcome.

Now, this is exactly the sort of reaction we should have towards anyone who voted No in 2014 and is expressing doubts or regrets of any sort. As yet, of course, Kezia Dugdale has not expressed any doubts as to her former opinions on self-determination for Scotland, and I don’t expect she will do so any time soon even if she does feel betrayed by Labour.

Here’s why. For one thing, Ms Dugdale was elected as a List MSP for the Labour Party. She cannot simply declare that she wishes to leave Labour and represent the SNP as, much as we might disagree with the sentiments of Labour voters, their views must be respected. So, rather than crossing the floor or, given the layout of the Scottish Parliament, moving round the seats, Kezia Dugdale would need to stand down so that the Labour Party could appoint a replacement from their List.

This would mean she would no longer be an MSP unless the SNP were to appoint her to replace one of their existing MSPs, a situation which is difficult to imagine.

So is she likely to decide to stand down? Given that she has already bemoaned the fact that the potential costs and outcome of the current legal case against her could bankrupt her, thus barring her from being an MSP, it seems that her current status within Parliament is extremely important to her.

This suggests that the only courses open to her are either to declare her support for independence in defiance of her party’s official stance, thus further alienating her from her fellow MSPs and possibly risking deselection, or keeping her thoughts to herself and carrying on as a loyal Labour MSP.

I’m not prepared to bet on which of those she will choose because it seems pretty obvious.

I know some people might think this idea is silly but I keep thinking it might be the best route for Scotland to become an independent nation again and I wanted to share it.

I know there isn’t really much chance that Brexit can be stopped but you never know. If the Westminster parties ever do give in to the calls for a second EU referendum, the chances are that Remain would win this time around. Scottish voters may be fed up of voting where their votes don’t count, but we need to make sure that Scotland votes decisively for Remain if we are given the chance.

Then, with the threat of Brexit removed, there will probably be another General Election because Theresa May’s credibility will be worth even less than it is now. I think the SNP should stand on a manifesto pledge to negotiate for independence if they win a majority of the Westminster seats. So, thirty or more SNP MPs means the people of Scotland want independence. I know some people think we need a referendum but if Westminster say no to that, we would be stuck, so why not use Westminster’s own voting system to our own advantage?

I know negotiations will be difficult, but doing it this way will mean that the ridiculous threat of a hard border cannot be used to scare people into voting against independence. If Brexit is stopped, England cannot refuse to trade with a fellow member of the EU. And don’t think Scotland will be kicked out. We may need a little time to set up our own central bank and currency but the EU will surely not deprive us of our citizenship and trading rights while we go about establishing the things we need. With the hard border threat gone, Unionists have no arguments left.

I suppose some people will argue that cancelling Brexit means there is no reason to leave the UK but that isn’t so at all. The past two years have surely proved that Scotland has no voice in the UK and that Westminster despises us. The attempted power grab and the exclusion from negotiations confirm that Scotland is viewed by Westminster as nothing more than a source of resources. They want our oil, our whisky, our taxes, our food, but they don’t want us to have a say in how those things are used.

Cancelling Brexit is the best thing for everyone in Britain. I don’t want the people of England to suffer because of the greed of some rich Brexiteers, but I don’t want the government of England to control Scotland either. With the proof of Brexit as an example, we can show the people of Scotland that there is a better way.

It sounds very much as if Theresa May is determined to drag the UK out of the EU with no deal. Perhaps her sound bite of “No deal is better than a bad deal" should have warned us, but there can no longer be much doubt that this has always been her intention, with the various pretences at negotiation being little more than a way of allowing her to blame the EU for the eventual outcome. Anyone who has been following events at all can see through the often ridiculous assertions of the UK Government, and it was obvious from the start that the much-vaunted Chequers agreement would never be accepted by the EU because, as usual, it attempted to cherry pick aspects of EU membership which the EU has consistently stated will not be agreed.

The really puzzling question is why May wants a No Deal scenario. All the economic forecasts, even those produced by her own Government, suggest that this will be catastrophic for the UK, so why forge ahead with little more than an appeal to patriotism as your justification?

There are several possible reasons, and none of them make any sense at all if viewed from the standpoint that the principal task of a Government is to look after the welfare of its citizens. Sorry, I meant subjects. We are subjects, not citizens. Makes you feel proud, that, doesn’t it?

But back to the reasons for a No Deal exit. Here are a few suggestions, all of them very concerning to varying extents, and all of them resulting in what could fairly be described as catastrophic for the welfare of we subjects.

The most benign interpretation of May’s bizarre actions is that she is merely incompetent and floundering out of her depth, yet so desperate to cling onto power that she is prepared to say and do anything that will prevent the hardline Brexiteers from ousting her. Those are the actions of a highly egocentric, not to say sociopathic, character, but it is probably the easiest to understand, even if it does raise the further question of why on earth she wants to cling on in office.

A second possible reason is that she genuinely wants to turn the UK into a tax haven because her multi-millionaire backers do not want the EU’s new anti-tax avoidance rules to affect their wealth. This is a genuine possibility but, like the first suggestion, has the great flaw that Brexit will severely damage the City of London finance sector. London-based banks may well be able to take advantage of lax legislation and minimal oversight to continue to run tax avoidance schemes, but the loss of international passporting rights within the EU is already causing many of these banks to move operations. So the cost of pursuing the goal of becoming a proper tax haven could well be the loss of London’s status within the international finance sector. Given that the UK doesn’t really have much else in the way of industry, that’s a severe loss.

But the most worrying possible reason for pursuing a No Deal is that Theresa May might genuinely believe in an ideological system which requires a highly authoritarian (some might say fascist) regime. Her actions as Home Secretary, where she oversaw the creation of the so-called Hostile Environment, certainly suggest that she is not averse to adopting an extreme Right Wing position.

Whether she is actually planning this, or whether she is merely aimlessly heading towards it, some people have suggested that No Deal would bring about the social chaos which would allow the UK Government to introduce emergency legislation which could see troops on the streets and the UK becoming what is usually referred to as a police state.

Now, that’s a scary thought, and one would hope that democracy would prevent it, yet we know from history that democracy can be undermined, and the past couple of years have shown us that this is exactly what is happening in the UK. Politicians can now lie with virtual impunity; electoral law can be openly flouted with little more consequence than a slap on the wrists and a relatively small fine; investigations into corruption rarely lead to prosecutions of prominent politicians; data mining and targeting of social media adverts influence election results; and, of course, the BBC continues to promote and normalise the views of UKIP and other extremists. The evidence of increased xenophobia and hate crimes is there for all to see, and this is a direct result of UK Government policy combined with a Right Wing media.

May’s continued refusal to countenance a second referendum on Brexit shows that she has little regard for public opinion. Whatever the reasons for this, none of them can have a good outcome for the vast majority of UK subjects. Sooner or later, Scots are going to have to wake up to the fact that it would be far better for them to become citizens of a normal country than to remain subjects of the UK plutocracy.

There has been plenty of debate over the timing of the next IndyRef. I’ve argued for some time that it cannot be called until we know precisely what Brexit is going to mean; hence the reason for delaying any announcement until October when what is supposed to be the final negotiations take place. Of course, it now seems likely that those negotiations will result in us being no closer to any resolution, and that the UK Government will continue to muddle on, demanding the right to cherry pick aspects of EU membership and complaining about the intransigence of EU officials who insist on sticking to the rules of their association. This means that any pronouncements about IndyRef2 may indeed need to wait until after 29th March next year which will, in turn, mean that people will be forced to wake up to the reality of Brexit.

Some people argue we should not wait so long because Scots have consistently voted to remain part of the EU, and waiting would result in us being forced to leave and then reapply when Scotland does not have all the necessary financial infrastructure required by the EU. This is certainly a disturbing prospect, and one which adds complications, but I do think the EU would be only too happy to allow Scotland to retain the benefits of membership with some grace period to establish the necessary institutions and policies, including a central bank and, hopefully, our own currency.

On the other hand, some people argue that waiting will result in a most definite Yes majority because Brexit will do so much damage so quickly that people will be forced to acknowledge that independence and remaining part of the EU represents Scotland’s best chance for the future. There is something to be said for this, but this course also contains some risks.

There is always the danger that Westminster will simply abolish the Scottish Parliament, thus giving Scots no democratic avenue for arranging IndyRef2, but there is another , perhaps more insidious, way our route to normality could be blocked.

You see, the UK has always relied on its subjects (that’s their preferred term for what most nations refer to as citizens, which tells you a lot about the British mindset) becoming accustomed to whatever the state wishes them to become accustomed to. Take Austerity as the latest example of this technique. There is a whole generation of young adults who have known nothing but Austerity since they left school. In Scotland, we have been protected from the worst ravages of Toryism, but there are thousands of young people who accept it as given that jobs will be hard to come by, will be low paid or on zero-hour contracts if they do find one; that harassment of the disabled and unemployed is normal; that our armed forces fighting in Middle Eastern countries is normal; that politicians telling blatant lies is how politics works; that Council homes are hard to come by and that buying a house is a dream which will never be fulfilled. All of this and more is viewed as normal by far too many people simply because they don’t know any different.

This is not to say that the older generation lived in a golden age as many Brexiteers fondly imagine. Those of us who lived through the latter part of the twentieth century know only too well that it had many of the same problems, but it was an age when opportunity through education and hard work could actually result in a higher standard of living. Aided by a free NHS, the post-war generations took advantage of those opportunities so that many more people lived in conditions which were significantly better than those of their parents and grandparents.

Today’s younger generation, in contrast, faces the prospect of living in worse conditions because the past ten years has undone much of the good work. Scots remain protected from the worst of it, but we still feel the effects, and this is the baseline against which change is represented, usually with a threat along the lines of, “If you think things are bad now, independence will make it even worse", while all the time ignoring the potentially catastrophic changes that Brexit will bring.

But people’s propensity for getting used to whatever conditions are imposed on them without thinking that there might be an alternative means that waiting until Brexit bites could backfire on the Yes movement. Because you can be sure that Westminster and the media will hold nothing back in their attempts to convince us that whatever happens, it is a price worth paying and, anyway, we’ll soon get used to it. There will be Union flags plastered on more and more things, television programmes will reinforce the message, and people will be expected to put up with it.

The generational aspect is intriguing. The older generations have been exposed to the UK message for so long that many will accept it no matter what happens, while the younger generations have known nothing other than Austerity Britain. Will they, too, shrug their shoulders and accept what they are told? Or will their habit of using online media for information allow them to break free of the mainstream message? We often put faith in that latter hope, but we need to be aware that the UK will be doing its utmost to spread its message online as well as through the traditional channels.

So, whenever IndyRef2 does come along, our main task will be to convince people that there is a better way.

The ongoing arguments over Braveheart are interesting if nothing else. There are a couple of aspects I want to touch on because, as with so many artistic productions, there are several levels on which the film can be judged.

One of the main arguments put forward about Braveheart is that it is only loosely based on recorded historical events. But that is because it is a film intended primarily to entertain by telling a story. Most films which fall into the historical fiction genre are based on recorded events but, for reasons of narrative, alter the story for a modern audience. Look at films like, for example, 300, U571, and Gladiator. Whether you like them from an entertainment perspective or not, all of them are based on recorded historical events yet bear only a passing resemblance to what is reported to have happened. Even films like that perennial favourite, Zulu, which are more accurate historically, still take some significant liberties in order to create an entertaining narrative.

Other historical fiction is produced in novels and plays, and all of these must, for reasons of maintaining audience engagement, create a story which will differ to some extent from the events recorded in history books. Take Macbeth as one example. One of Shakespeare’s enduring plays, it has about as much relationship to historical events as The Hobbit, yet nobody seems to get upset about its representation of Scottish history.

So why the fuss over Braveheart? I think it is because the film has an emotional appeal which can act as a rallying cry for those who want to see Scotland become independent. This is why an edited screening is planned in George square on Saturday. So I suspect many of the objections to this plan come not from a dislike of the historical inaccuracies but from a fear that opponents of Scottish independence will use this ploy to make sneering remarks about Yes supporters being kilt-wearing, flag-waving, blue-faced fanatics with no grasp of the real issues.

Perhaps we should be concerned that some Unionists will respond this way, but let’s not forget that the people who are likely to make such accusations are the same ones who are constantly harking back to days of Empire, the Battle of Britain, Trafalgar and Agincourt. When you look at it that way, we really shouldn’t be too defensive about Braveheart, especially since there are plenty of people who can make rational, logical and highly informed arguments in favour of Scottish self-determination.

We should remember that Braveheart was not made to appeal solely to a Scottish audience. It was aimed at a worldwide audience and it was very successful. The storyline may have veered away from recorded events, but it was well told and had a wide appeal all around the globe. This is because, being made for entertainment, it created that essential emotional bond with the audience. It might be worth comparing its appeal with another historical epic film called Alexander which was made with the declared intention of closely following the recorded events of the life of Alexander the great. It did precisely that, and it was a flop because the story was not presented for a modern audience. I have no idea what people in Macedonia think about Alexander as a film, but I’m fairly sure they’d have preferred a less historically accurate but more emotionally engaging film which promoted their nation to a worldwide audience.

Storytelling is a fundamental human activity. We all love stories in one shape or another. Films are made for modern audiences and the best ones create that bond with the audience so that we become engaged with the characters. Whether we take that emotional attachment to a second level is entirely up to each of us as individuals.

We may cringe when we hear Mel Gibson’s attempts at a Scottish accent, we may shake our heads at the lack of a bridge in the battle of Stirling Bridge, we may recognise the flaws in many aspects of the film, but we cannot deny it is a great story, an impressive representation and a powerful film. It celebrates an important character and an important time in our history, and promotes that era all around the world. If it gets people talking about Scotland, then that is a good thing, enabling us to explain our more modern outlook on the future of our nation. So, while I have doubts that showing the film in George Square will achieve much other than to arouse emotions, I am not going to cringe about the film simply because some Unionists may sneer at it. In my opinion, it’s a damn sight more entertaining and relevant to Scotland than films like Victoria & Abdul, The Crown, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, and all the other pro-British films that have been produced in the past few years. And none of those are totally historically accurate either.

Last week’s poll results suggesting that Brexit would result in a majority of Scots supporting independence and an even larger majority of people in Northern Ireland supporting unification with the Republic does raise an interesting topic.

Because the vote percentages alter if Brexit is called off. Now, there is no doubt that Brexit is a calamity in the making, and calling it off would be the sensible thing to do. But even if that happens – and it looks increasingly unlikely – does that really mean that a fairly significant portion of people would be happy to remain with the status quo?

I’m not talking about the hardline Unionists here. The Council By-election in Dalgety Bay demonstrates that some people will vote Tory no matter what opinions their candidate might express, but the opinion poll clearly shows that some people are prepared to change their minds about independence solely on the basis of whether Brexit goes ahead or not.

OK, most people dislike change, but hasn’t the UK Government shown just how much contempt it holds for the Celtic nations of Britain? Do people really think that calling off Brexit means that the UK will return to some semblance of normality? Have they remained ignorant of the Power Grab? Have they not noticed the rampant xenophobia which has been unleashed? Have they not paid attention to Donald Trump’s antics or the rise of Far Right politicians in Europe?

To think that the likes of Nigel Farage are simply going to accept defeat if Article 50 is revoked is, I would submit, naïve. Having come so close to dragging the UK out of the EU, they will simply try again, perhaps using even more outrageous tactics than the lies and illegal campaigning which won the first vote. The Tories are now just as bad as UKIP and they are not going to suddenly become all nice and cuddly even if Brexit is called off. Having set the wheels in motion to grab power from the devolved assemblies, having launched their campaign to plaster Union flags on pretty much everything, they aren’t going to stop.

Of course, Article 50 isn’t going to be revoked unless there is a dramatic change of mind in Westminster, so this is all hypothetical, but the poll does make me wonder why so many people seem so short-sighted when it comes to politics.

The past couple of weeks have shown, once again, that the UK media in Scotland is very much the enemy of the Yes movement. However, while most of the online Yessers responded with humour and mockery to the recent claims about Bots and an SNP civil war, a few have voiced opinions that certain individuals and organisations should be punished in some way once Scotland becomes a normal country.

Let me say that I have no time for the UK media in Scotland. I don’t watch or listen to the mainstream news except in very exceptional circumstances, and I don’t purchase newspapers. That’s not to say I don’t keep up with current political affairs since there are many online resources and news feeds from all around the world. But I detest the way the UK media in Scotland misrepresents and distorts events in order to promote the Unionist perspective, and I resent the fact that, for most of my life, I didn’t fully appreciate just how much they were lying to all of us.

But calling people in the media traitors or Quislings, and suggesting they should be kicked out of an independent Scotland is, I think, going too far.

One of the central tenets of the Yes movement is that we want to build an open, inclusive and welcoming nation. We cannot do that if we call for those who disagree with us to be punished in some way.

We need to accept the fact that, even if Scotland does become independent, the media is not going to suddenly vanish, nor is it likely to undergo an immediate change of heart. The tax-avoiding billionaires who own the print media will not alter their views, and the broadcast media, in whatever shape it ultimately adopts, will still take its lead from the print media. Of course, if the union is dissolved, the thrust of their arguments might alter, but they will almost certainly support whichever political party opposes the SNP.

Quite what that political opposition will look like is anyone’s guess. The current Unionist parties may wither without the financial support of their London bosses, or they may survive in slightly altered guise, perhaps forming a grand coalition party. But whatever they do, the neo-liberal globalists will provide them with backing, and perhaps those who currently supply Dark Money will continue to do so in order to keep anti-SNP parties alive and kicking.

We are going to have to deal with this whatever happens, but we cannot sink to the level of our opponents by demanding retribution. That is not how an open, inclusive and welcoming nation should behave.

I am not saying we should forget how the media has behaved, nor am I saying we should necessarily forgive. I’m not even saying we should trust them, even if they do claim to have changed their minds. But I am saying that we must be prepared to tolerate them as part of our society if they are prepared to live and work in Scotland.

Scotland, whether as part of the UK or as a normal country, will not be unique in having social divisions. Nor can we imagine that such divisions will magically disappear if we become independent. disagreement and argument is an important part of being a normal country. It would be nice if the Right Wing narrative of the media could be marginalised, but it isn’t going to go away. As we have seen over the past few days, one of the best ways to deal with this is with humour. That’s one thing we are good at.

Perhaps there will be opportunities to create a media which better reflects the mood and psyche of an independent Scotland, but it’s probably not going to appear instantly. A normal country needs a normal media, and it may well happen in time. But it’s not going to happen if we continue demanding retribution. We are better than that.

The UK-controlled media in Scotland is certainly going overboard in its attempts to discredit Alex Salmond and, by extension, the case for Scotland becoming a normal country. This may please the hard-line Unionists, but it is also creating an unhealthy response among the Yes community, with many people declaring the entire story nothing more than another conspiracy.

It must be said that the media have a track record of attempting to create #SNPBad stories based on very little, so it is no wonder the conspiracy theory angle is taking root, but the entire saga is in danger of growing out of control as opinions become more and more entrenched while facts remain few.

We cannot know whether the allegations made by two women against Alex Salmond are true or false, but it must surely be evident that whoever is leaking details to the media is not doing so out of concern for the women’s welfare. In fact, all they are creating is an atmosphere where other women may well be deterred from coming forwards to make claims about inappropriate behaviour for fear of becoming embroiled in a media circus.

Not that this will prevent the media whipping up a storm. They will leap on any bandwagon they can find in their attempts to discredit anyone or anything linked to Scottish independence, while simultaneously playing down or completely ignoring inappropriate behaviour on the part of unionist politicians even when that is proven and not merely an allegation. The media are also desperate to avoid any discussion of electoral fraud or dark money, all of which only adds fuel to the claims of this latest episode being an anti-SNP plot.

It is all depressingly familiar and sad, and it is also grossly unfair on the three individuals at the centre of the case, none of whom can now expect much in the way of fair treatment. That is perhaps one of the greatest disservices the UK media in Scotland has done to our nation. Their constant howls of outrage over what turn out to be invented or exaggerated claims mean that any new allegation is now viewed with scepticism.

If Alex Salmond is guilty of the alleged behaviour, then this should be made public once the evidence has been properly examined; if he is innocent, then this, too, should be made public in due course.

There are two other points to bear in mind. The first is that even if he is guilty of behaving in the alleged manner, that does not affect the case for Scottish self-determination. Secondly, Nicola Sturgeon has responded in a dignified and sensible way. Many others could perhaps learn a lesson from her in how to react to difficult situations.

So that was GERS Day, when nobody at all changed their minds. Unionists proudly proclaimed that the figures proved Scotland was an economic basket case, delighting in the sorry state of their own country, while Yessers sneered at the multitude of flaws in the data and the conclusions reached by the media who gleefully reported the black hole as if it has any bearing on how an independent Scotland would operate or, indeed, on the actual reality of how Scotland operates at the moment.

The most telling thing from the stated “Black Hole" is that, when you add this to the equivalent economic deficits attributed to Wales and Northern Ireland, these three nations, with under 16% of the UK population somehow manage to account for around 55% of the UK deficit. That’s quite an amazing statistic, and it shows one of two things.

First, either centuries of Westminster control have left the Celtic nations of the UK utterly destitute, or that the figures are incorrect.

In the first case, one must wonder why Westminster would leave three of its constituent parts in such a state. Is it so that they can preen their feathers and boast about their generosity in keeping such economically ruinous countries afloat? If that is the case, it’s the action of a deranged psychopath. It’s certainly not the sort of long term economic strategy any sensible Government would adopt. Why burden yourself with three areas which are such a huge drain on your own economy? Bear in mind that the UK Government begrudges subsidising a spare bedroom, yet expects us to believe that it has spent hundreds of years happily subsidising Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland out of the goodness of its heart. Pull the other one, guys.

Or, as mentioned, the figures could be totally inaccurate. This seems more than likely given the number of guesses and estimates included in the figures and the unrealistic allocations of debt share, but those have been covered by other commentators, so there is no point in going over the same ground here.

This debate has been going on for a few years now and is unlikely to change, but there is one thing I really would like to see change, and that is the response of the SNP to the GERS figures. Their official line is to accept GERS as the best available statistics and try to use them to show Scotland’s economic performance as improving. Just once, I’d like to see them publish the GERS figures along with an official statement saying something like, “Here are the figures but we’re not going to comment on them because we know they are meaningless and inaccurate."

I’m sure they’d come in for a storm of criticism in the media, but that happens anyway. It’s about time they made another dramatic gesture, but they’ve missed their chance with this year’s GERS.

We’ve had occasion to post articles about language snobbery on this site before, but it remains a constant problem. Whether it is people being told to alter their accent if they want to have a job, or people complaining about Gaelic road signs, you can hear such comments all too frequently.

In the past week or so, there has been another variant on this, with Unionist politicians complaining that the Gaelic language continues to receive support from the Scottish Government while the study of modern foreign languages is in decline in Scottish schools. The numbers of pupils sitting exams in modern foreign languages as dropped dramatically and, as you would expect, the Scottish Government is being blamed, with one of the reasons cited being that it puts too much emphasis on Gaelic.

Of course, this is a typical #SNPBad claim since a look south of the border reveals that the number of pupils sitting A levels in modern foreign languages has plummeted despite the UK Government having no truck with Gaelic. The problem is, therefore, nothing to do with support for Gaelic in Scotland.

So what is the problem? It would be easy to blame Brexit, but this would be a mistake since pupils sitting Higher exams in Scotland and A levels in England must have been studying their chosen modern language for four or five years at least. This suggests the decline began long before Brexit was an issue, although there is no doubt that the xenophobia behind it certainly won’t help improve the situation.

Whatever the cause, let’s hope that Scottish pupils soon have more reasons to want to learn a foreign language and that we can alter the typically British attitude that there is no need to learn any other languages since foreigners all speak English anyway. That’s the sort of thinking that helps bolster the Brexit narrative.

As for the current wave of criticism, it would be nice if educationalists were consulted on the issue rather than people simply pointing fingers and shouting, “Gaelic Bad!". If there is a problem, let’s address it by seeking out the genuine causes.

Summer is traditionally a quiet time in politics, but the media need to keep churning out stories, and they’ve certainly been maintaining their usual standards recently.

One of the recent reports attempted to portray an image of Scotland’s First Minister as indecisive because she admitted that her decision on how to proceed with another IndyRef would depend on the outcome of the final Brexit talks in October. This, of course, has always been her position, although some have questioned whether the outcome of the Brexit talks really makes all that much difference. However, there is no doubt that the increasingly likely scenario of a No Deal Brexit will make the choice facing Scots even more stark.

There will still be significant hurdles to be overcome. First will be how the Scottish Government responds should Westminster stick to the “Now is not the time" mantra and refuse to grant a Section 30 order. There have been plenty of views put forward on how this could be circumvented, but we need to rely on Nicola Sturgeon to make the right call here because there is no doubt the Tories and the media will do their utmost to portray any referendum as illegal and unconstitutional if they are given the slightest opportunity.

If that obstacle is hurdled, we then face the massive problem of overcoming the media itself. That will be down to grass roots Yessers as much as the SNP and Greens, but there is no doubt that the potentially disastrous consequences of a NO Deal Brexit will make our arguments that much easier.

There is, however, another very sobering thought which we need to be prepared for. Nobody has ever claimed that becoming a normal country will not present difficulties. The whole point of independence is that we will be able to elect a Government to tackle those problems and, if it does not do as the voters wish, we can elect another one rather than have one imposed upon us.

But a No Deal Brexit poses a significant threat to a newly independent Scotland because of the logistical nightmares it is likely to bring about. We may retain our EU membership, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails, but the bulk of our imported food, medicines and anything else you care to mention, comes in through the Channel ports. This means that, even if we become independent and remain in the EU, we will still be significantly impacted by all the threatened shortages. It will also, of course, impact our exporters whose goods mainly leave the UK via England.

So, in addition to planning how to obtain a second IndyRef and, most importantly of all, how to win it, the Scottish Government really should be making contingency plans for how to circumvent the logistical impact of Brexit.

The good news is that the rest of the EU will be on our side and will no doubt go out of their way to help us, but the reality is that our ports and infrastructure simply are not geared up to coping with huge volumes of imports and exports going anywhere but via England. This needs to be addressed as a matter of priority. Ireland has already purchased larger ferries so that they can help reduce the Brexit effect, but Scotland has been unable to do anything.

As with any problem, there are opportunities here, and not the post-imperial daydream sort so beloved by the Brexiteers. Prestwick airport could see a rebirth as a major hub for both passenger and freight flights, while ports on both the east and west coasts could be developed to service new trade routes. But such things take time, and we cannot ignore the fact that a No Deal Brexit is going to hurt.

This is, though, another reason to vote Yes in a second IndyRef. Because it gives us the chance to work our way out of the damage and become a stronger, more resilient nation. The alternative will be decades of stagnation under an isolated, xenophobic Government ruled by a wealthy elite formed by the extreme Right Wing. There is only one escape route left for us. What we need to do is convince enough of our fellow Scots to see this.

On that point, I was heartened to hear the news of a former Tory Councillor openly declaring that she had changed her mind, left the Tory Party and declared support for independence. Anyone who has the courage to do that should be welcomed with open arms, because we need as many people as possible to convert from No to Yes. The more of them who have the courage to openly admit to changing their minds, the easier our task will become. Then we can all work towards creating a normal country.

Just about the only scare story the Unionists have left is the one about the problems Scotland would face regarding trade with England if it became independent. The UK Government in Scotland, formerly known as the Scottish Office, has been pumping out this message via social media for a while, hoping to persuade Scots that breaking away from its biggest trade partner would be a bad move. The irony of that coming from a Government which is obsessed with forging ahead with Brexit no matter the cost seems entirely lost on David Mundell’s office.

The scare should be seen for what it is for a number of reasons.

First of all, even if England decides it must impose a hard border between itself and a newly independent Scotland, they probably don’t have the capacity to do this. Several Tory Brexiteers have already voiced the opinion that they will simply wave all imports through the Irish border and the Channel ports because they couldn’t cope with checking them all.

Of course, the EU would require checks on imports coming into Scotland, so some disruption would occur, but we should not forget that the UK insists it will do magnificent new trade deals around the world so, unless they are particularly spiteful and vindictive, they will want to continue to trade with Scotland. Tories? Spiteful and vindictive? OK, maybe there is an issue there, but we’ll address that in a few moments.

Another reason to ignore the trade threat is to remember that Scotland has always been an outward looking country. Scottish inventors and entrepreneurs have always been capable of finding new markets when opportunities arise. And Ireland provides the perfect example of a nation adjusting its trade when opportunities presented themselves. When Ireland became independent, nearly all of its trade was with the UK. Now, it is only around a third of Ireland’s trade. It may take a little time, but Scotland could surely replicate this.

Also, while it would need an expert in central Asian trade to confirm or deny this, many countries which were formerly part of the Soviet Union must have had to realign their trading profiles on the break-up of that entity. None of them seem to have collapsed as a result of these changes.

And we should not forget the eastern European countries who had to undergo huge transformations in all aspects of society including trade when the Warsaw Pact crumbled. Nor should we forget that none of these countries, with the possible exception of parts of the Ukraine, seem keen to give up their independence and become part of Russia again. In contrast, they seized the opportunities provided by independence, with many of them choosing to join the EU to take advantage of the trading opportunities it provides. Do we really believe Scots are less capable of developing trade than the people of these countries?

But the main reason we should not be frightened by this particular scare is that England will want Scottish goods and services just as much as we will want theirs. Can you imagine them being happy at losing access to things like whisky, salmon and beef to name but three?

OK, you could argue that the Tories might convince the people of England that they can do without such things and should get used to American bourbon and chlorinated chicken instead. After all, when the English NHS falls into the hands of US drugs companies, people will be paying too much for medical services to be able to afford decent food and drink.

But, amidst all the statistics pumped out by the former Scottish Office is a very intriguing one. It mentions that Scotland exports nearly £6bn of utilities to England. That’s things like water and electricity to you and me. Indeed, it has been claimed that the amount of electricity being supplied to England by Scotland is equivalent to the power produced by two nuclear power stations. That is an incredible claim but, if true, shows just how reliant England is on Scottish-produced power.

The so-called National Grid, which really serves four nations, is designed to hamper Scottish production of power. We have already seen Scottish power stations closing down because paying the exorbitant charges imposed by the grid simply to connect to it made the stations unviable. In contrast, power stations in England are paid to connect to the Grid. That’s not exactly a fair and equitable single market, is it? But it’s the sort of thing we have come to expect.

Yet, despite this handicap, Scotland is developing renewable energy to such an extent that we are not only providing our own power, we are exporting enough electricity to England to cover the output of two nuclear stations they don’t have.

So, even if you believe the Tories are so spiteful and vindictive that they would trade with every other country in the world except their nearest neighbours, even they would surely have second thoughts about letting their citizens suffer power cuts because they no longer had access to Scottish electricity.

So don’t fall for this scare. Trade is a two-way process, and Scotland has a strong hand when it comes to negotiations. And, of course, there is the fundamental point that if we remain in the EU, then England will have no option but to trade with us if they ever do a deal with the EU.

The final thing to bear in mind is that every other claim by Unionists during the first IndyRef has turned out to be completely false. Why should we believe this one? Don’t get fooled again.

The attack by the BBC on the Youtube channels of prominent Indy supporters has been well documented elsewhere, so there’s no need to go into the detail of how the UK state propaganda outlet has abused the Fair Use aspects of copyright in an attempt to silence criticism of its bias.

This abuse of power is bad enough, but another aspect of this sorry saga is equally concerning. That is the alacrity with which Youtube has shut down the channels on the say-so of the BBC without giving any chance to point out that these sites have not breached copyright. Indeed, you would think Youtube would know the rules on this since they publish them on their website.

So why did they cave in to the BBC? Has pressure been applied by other UK state offices? We will probably never know, but it’s a worrying thought.

What it does show, of course, is that the UK is petrified of the Indy movement and will do anything to prevent criticism of its own media output. No doubt pro-Indy groups and individuals will come up with some other way of making videos available for sharing, but using Youtube would appear to be a route best avoided.

This is little short of a declaration of war on the part of the UK state broadcaster. It is a war against freedom of speech and the rights of ordinary citizens to voice their opinion. Fair, balanced and impartial it ain’t.

It really is amazing how many Brexiteers seem content to put up with the economic and social implications of their vote. The huge reduction in workers coming from abroad is impacting the NHS, food is rotting in the fields, yet they don’t seem to care; businesses, especially those in the financial sector which is the UK’s main business sector, are moving abroad, yet they don’t seem to care; the UK Government is now admitting that stockpiling of food and medicines is a necessary precaution, yet they don’t seem to care.

This really ought to be a lesson to us when the next IndyRef comes along. Remember how Scots were so scared of being £10 per week worse off if they voted Yes? It was laughable at the time, and seems even more so now when you consider the impact Brexit has already had on the UK.

In fairness, we must acknowledge that the Brexiteers are showing more resolve in the face of potential calamity than 55% of Scots did in 2014. Their devotion to their cause is almost fanatical, while Scots still fret over a theoretical budget deficit and worry whether our nation could actually survive. The fact that so many other countries have survived when their situation has been far less favourable than Scotland’s circumstances simply doesn’t seem to register with far too many Scottish voters. And what far too many people still don’t seem to appreciate is that Scotland as we know it may not survive if we stick with the UK. We are nearing a crucial point in history. How we react will have consequences which will last far beyond our own lifetimes. Let’s not mess it up this time.

With the UK steadily bungling its way towards a hard Brexit, calls for a second IndyRef are mounting among Yes activists, and there is growing impatience among many that time is running out. Yet Nicola Sturgeon remains silent on the matter while the SNP MPs in Westminster continue to battle against the odds to preserve some semblance of sanity in the march towards the cliff edge.

I have mentioned before that the SNP have little alternative other than to play a waiting game. If Brexit were to be called off, then the main reason for IndyRef2 would disappear. This does not mean that the case for Scottish independence goes away, but many people would breathe a sigh of relief and it might be difficult to persuade them that Scotland needs to escape the madness.

As every day passes, however, the chances of Brexit being called off diminish. It now seems almost certain that the Brexiteers will get their way and a hard Brexit will ensue. However, there is still a small chance that something dramatic will happen to call the whole thing off.

It must be admitted that this seems unlikely. If Theresa May were looking for an excuse to call a halt, the revelations about the illegality behind the Leave campaign provide her with the perfect excuse to call for a second referendum. So far, she shows no signs of wanting to do this. Indeed, we are now hearing that the UK Government intends to issue advice notices on what to expect in the event of a hard Brexit which is what those controlling May have been after all along. So don’t count on a second referendum being called just because the first one was won by cheating.

What else might halt the drive to a hard Brexit? Some people still talk of an early General Election sparked by Theresa May’s downfall. But May is still clinging on, trying to keep everyone happy in a binary situation which is bound to disappoint around half of the voting population of the UK. Her intent at the moment seems to be to appease the hard-line Brexiteers because to defy them would split the Tory Party. The so-called Tory rebels have caved in at every opportunity, and the majority of Tory MPs are happy to be lobby fodder supporting the Government against the wishes of the electorate who, if polls are to be believed, have changed their mind about Brexit.

Even if she does find herself ousted, it seems unlikely anything would change as regards Brexit. Her replacement is likely to be one of the arch-Brexiteers – a horrifying thought considering how they have blundered and blustered their way through the past 18 months of “negotiations".

And if England decides to back Jeremy Corbyn, that still won’t change things. He is very pro-Brexit and will no doubt continue down the road the Tories have established. His election might result in a delay, but it is unlikely to halt the process entirely.

No, all a snap General Election will do is create a hiatus during which the paucity of actual political solutions will be evident to anyone who cares to look, and very probably a hung Parliament which will nevertheless comprise a majority of pro-Brexit MPs or, at the very least, enough Abstainers to ensure Brexit is not halted.

So what else could stop this insane march to economic and social disaster?

Well, the Brexit negotiations are due to be finalised in October. Things like the Irish and Gibraltar border questions still need to be resolved. As many commentators have pointed out, they cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of all parties, so this may result in some crunch talks in October.

While the situation is so fluid that anything could happen, I suspect Nicola Sturgeon is waiting to see what happens in October.

There are a couple of possible scenarios here. The first is that a hard Brexit is confirmed as the talks collapse. If that happens, IndyRef2 is very much back on the agenda. This time around, the undoubted uncertainties surrounding the establishment of Scotland as a normal country can be contrasted with the absolute certainty of the consequences of Brexit. When the Unionists make their usual calls to cling to historical links, when they make daft claims about the so-called “UK Single Market", when they ask what currency we will use, we will be able to point back and ask how they will cope with the loss of all international air flights, with food supplies failing, with medicines running out, and with most international companies having moved their business elsewhere.

In the second scenario, we could see Brexit halted because the questions over the Irish and Gibraltar borders prove insurmountable. In that case, then another General Election is inevitable as the Tory Brexiteers engineer a vote of NO Confidence in Theresa May.

This is a different proposition to the early General Election some believed would happen. If there is a General Election because Brexit has been called off, the SNP should stand on a manifesto of declaring independence if they gain a majority of Scottish seats. Turning the General Election into a de facto referendum on independence means voters will not need to go to the polls twice.

Of course, UK politics are so volatile that something else might happen which nobody has foreseen, but we must be ready for an independence campaign later this year. And, while we do want to paint a positive picture of what an independent Scotland could look like, we know that fear of change motivates many voters. Becoming a normal country after more than three centuries of the Union will undoubtedly present challenges, but they are nothing compared to the challenges we will face if we stick with a post-Brexit UK.

Most people will be familiar with the famous saying that the one thing we learn from history is that people never learn from history. If you ever doubted the veracity of the remark, look around you and see what is happening in politics.

As a young teenager, I read a lot of books about the Second World War which had ended only a dozen years before I was born. My father served overseas and was severely wounded for his troubles, so it was fairly natural that I should take an interest in those events. At the time, there were plenty of books and films being produced which gave a variety of perspectives on the conflict. One novel I read (and I honestly don’t remember the book title or author) had a comment that not all the Nazis fought on the Axis side. I recall being fairly annoyed when reading that because we were the good guys, after all. We fought the Nazis and defeated them, so everyone on our side must have been anti-Nazi. In one sense, of course, they were, but as I grew older I began to appreciate that the comment was perhaps not all that far from the truth.

Yet my generation still understood the horror of allowing authoritarian political movements to seize control of a nation state. We used the terms Nazi and Fascist but, to be fair, extremists exhibit the same behaviour whether they claim to be on the extreme Left or the extreme Right of politics. Whatever name you care to use to label them, they present a genuine threat to the ideas of liberal democracy which formed the prevailing ethos in the post-war era. Xenophobia, the persecution of minority groups, increasing militarisation, and the accumulation of privilege among a selected few are just some aspects which people of the older generation can recognise as being fascist.

We used to wonder how people in 1930s Spain, Italy and Germany could allow such cruel groups to take control of their countries, yet now we are experiencing the same things ourselves and it is very frightening because of its seemingly inexorable tide as extreme views become state policy, each one going a step further than the last.

At the moment, the USA is the most prominent example of how extremism can take control, but every country has its share of people who espouse authoritarian views, and they are becoming more prominent in places like Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Italy and Spain, while Russia has been an authoritarian state for the past century, with only a brief flirtation with genuine democracy after the fall of the Soviet Union. And, of course, we should not exclude the UK from that list since the persecution of minority groups and rampant xenophobia are all too evident in our own society.

But it is the USA which attracts most attention by virtue of its power, influence and the rapidity with which it is marching towards the Right. You can argue over whether Donald Trump ever really believed he would become President; you can debate whether he is a manipulator or is being manipulated by others; you can deride him as infantile, but however he achieved his current position, he has enabled those who espouse extreme views to voice their opinion and shape policy. Having set this example, people in other countries are, sadly, following his lead.

Many of us ask how ordinary people can continue to support such views, especially when the evidence of history shows us that authoritarian states do not enrich the lives of the ordinary people but instead see the accumulation of wealth by the ruling elite. It’s like turkeys voting for Christmas, isn’t it? This is a question which would probably challenge experts in psychology and sociology, so don’t expect a short, simple answer here. However, we must recognise that there will always be some people who are susceptible to persuasion that everything wrong with their lives is the fault of outsiders, and who believe the promises that any individual can achieve wealth if they work hard enough. Combine this with nationalistic fervour which elevates the nation state above all other states, and you create an environment in which hatred can breed.

But, as we can see from our experience in the UK, such extremism does not need to be as overt as the American example provides. Casual racism and a sense of British exceptionalism has been a part of UK society for centuries, taking a strong grip in the Victorian days of Empire and barely loosening its hold despite the more liberal attitudes of the immediate post-war era. Now we see that xenophobia and persecution of minority groups are state policy as the Windrush and Universal Credit issues show us only too well. Yet even with people committing suicide because of cuts to social security, even with people who have lived all their lives in the UK being deported, even with food banks proliferating, even with Brexit guaranteed to make the vast majority of people poorer and more vulnerable to exploitation, the Tories are still ahead in the opinion polls.

We should always be sceptical of polls which are often described as being used to influence public opinion rather than reflect them, but we must face the fact that the voters of England in particular keep voting for the Tories. Why on earth do they do this when many of them must surely be able to see what harm is being done by Tory policies?

Of course, there will always be those who have benefitted from the system and so will vote to maintain the status quo, but the Tories also derive a lot of support from people who would not, on the face of it, be their natural support base. Pandering to the xenophobia, which UK society has always encouraged even if only in subtle ways, may be one answer, but the other surely lies in the desire that every individual harbours; the desire to improve one’s lot in life. Through our media, we are bombarded with visions of how the wealthy live, and we are encouraged to believe that we, too, could achieve this exalted status with all the wealth and privilege it brings. This is part of the big trick because, although a handful of individuals may well achieve riches, the vast majority will never move beyond the circumstances they were born into. Yet the dream lives on, and allows people to vote for a system they are told will give them a chance to escape their current circumstances. This, in itself, is an example of the Me First society the Tories have promoted since Margaret Thatcher came to power, and it is, perhaps, the essential problem facing us today.

As long ago as the third century BCE, the Greek philosopher Epicurus put forward the view that comparing ourselves to others and wishing for more than we already possess was the surest way to unhappiness. Contentment, he said, came from being satisfied with what blessings you already have. Now, this can be viewed in a couple of ways. You may agree that being jealous of someone else’s good fortune is no way to be happy within yourself, or you may say that simply accepting one’s position shows a lack of ambition.

Indeed, we should all be ambitious, but it is the nature of that ambition which divides our society. Some – perhaps far too many – are ambitious only for themselves. They want fame and fortune for their own personal benefit because that is the way they perceive society operating. They see the world divided into winners and losers, and because they work hard they cannot understand why they are not among the winners. This creates a sense of resentment which needs an outlet; an outlet provided by politicians who direct the ire towards minority groups.

Others, in contrast, are ambitious for the whole of society. This is often dismissed as idealistic since there will always be levels of wealth and status within a liberal democracy. But, while this is true, those of us who grew up in the post-war era can recognise that we were all part of a great social experiment which allowed the working class to greatly enhance their position. Yes, there were still rich people around, but everyone had a chance, through excellent and free education and healthcare, to gain more control over their own destiny. We did not all become superstars or millionaires, but when we look back at the conditions our parents and grandparents grew up in, we were all several notches up the ladder from where they had been.

The difference in attitudes between those who are ambitious for themselves and those who are ambitious for everyone is that the former are quite happy to pull the ladder up after them or stand on the fingers of others who want to climb it, while the latter want everyone to be able to climb as high as they can.

Now, however, thanks to the rise of the Right wing, all of the advances made in the post-war years are under threat. Those who promote division, racism and persecution are in control, and their influence is emboldening that element of the population who believe the jingoistic slogans because they have been taught to believe them.

Where does this leave us, and how can we alter things?

These are difficult questions to answer. Protests on the streets and angry comments on social media can only go so far. Our main weapon is the ballot box and we must use it. Not only that, we must encourage everyone we know to use it and to use it wisely. There will always be some individuals who are beyond persuasion, but many people remain poorly informed and subjected to the mainstream media narrative which is designed to prevent them challenging the status quo. We need to decide which direction we want our society to go, whether that is as part of the UK, a member of the EU or as a normal nation in control of its own affairs. Above all, we need to learn from our history and try to avoid the mistakes of the past. More and more people are starting to realise that Scotland made a huge mistake in 2014. We know now that even the ballot box cannot save us in UK General Elections because the Westminster system is designed to maintain the status quo.

Which really only leaves us one choice if we are to avoid following England down the path towards fascism.

So when we get another chance, please make sure we don’t repeat the mistake we made last time.

According to the Disabled Living Foundation, there are around 13.3 million disabled people living in the UK. That’s almost one in five of the total population. Of these, only about 17% are born with a disability. By my rough calculation, this means that anyone reading this article who does not currently have a disability has around a 15% chance of developing one either as a result of an accident, an inherited condition or simple bad luck in their health.

If you are lucky enough not to have developed a disability already, then I sincerely hope it doesn’t happen to you because, as we know only too well, the disabled, along with the poor and the unemployed, have been a primary target for the Tories’ Austerity-driven policies.

But the harm is not confined to economics. The resurgence of hatred and division as political tools has also resulted in people with disabilities being targeted for attacks ranging from verbal abuse to actual physical harm. That’s what happens when picking on the vulnerable becomes State policy.

All of this is over and above the daily problems faced by people with disabilities. Simply coping with daily life can take huge amounts of effort for people who just want to be able to participate in society like everyone else.

But, bearing in mind the statistics mentioned above, perhaps those people who support Tory policies which are designed to harm disabled people ought to take a few moments to reflect on how they would feel if something bad suddenly happened to them. Would they still back the degrading PIP assessments and the callous disregard for actual health problems which Work Capability Assessments seem to delight in? How would they claim Universal Credit if they find themselves unable to use a computer to register online?

Of course, nobody ever thinks it will happen to them, but the reality is very different. And if you are one of the 80% who are fortunate enough to avoid disabling accidents or health issues, then you ought at least to consider your good fortune and not look down on those who have been less privileged.

Right Wing politicians are very good at directing hatred towards minority groups because they understand that they can only maintain their control by ensuring that the populace remains divided. People cannot alter their ethnic background, the colour of their skin or their sexual orientation, but their status as an able-bodied person can certainly change. So why do so many people discriminate against a group of people they might well suddenly find are their fellow sufferers? There is probably no simple answer to that question, but a part of it must be the daily diet of hate coming from the media and Right Wing politicians and councillors which encourages people to behave with animosity towards anyone they perceive as different.

Hatred of others is learned, and far too many people seem happy to take the opportunities our society is now giving them to express their hate. Some of these people are probably beyond redemption, but others may yet come to see that they are being influenced and encouraged. It is important that we do not answer hate with hate. We should call out discrimination when we see it, and we must encourage people to join us in speaking out. It is likely that we will never eradicate discrimination because there will always be self-serving politicians who understand that encouraging division will help their own cause, but that does not mean we should give up. What we need to aim for is a society where any form of discrimination, in word or deed, is viewed as socially unacceptable. If people harbour such hurtful views, then they need to understand that they should keep them to themselves. And if they are directing their hatred at people with disabilities, then they ought to be reminded that they may well find themselves in that same position one day.

The BBC in Scotland have been trying to make news out of the fact that many Scots are not supporting England in the World Cup and that many go so far as to support whoever England are playing against. IN some perverted way, this is seen as evidence that those who support Scottish independence are anti-English.

The reality is that, as with any sporting rivalry, there will always be those who harbour a dislike of their nearest and greatest rivals. Look at any local derby football match for confirmation of this. Whether this dislike continues after a match will depend on the individual concerned, but whatever people’s sporting views are, it is wrong to assume that these can be used as evidence of their political views.

As for the issue of Scottish football fans not supporting England, a trawl through social media comments will show that the problem lies not so much with the sporting aspect but with the media.

Let’s face it, England have a good team with a lot of talented players. They may or may not win the World Cup, but they certainly have a chance. They also have a manager who is increasingly showing himself to be calm, sensible, and good at man management.

The problem, though, is with the media. But let us admit that the Scottish media would probably be just as excited and over the top if Scotland were ever to do well in a World Cup. Those old enough to remember 1978 will know what that was like. An official celebration parade before the team even left was embarrassing, and let’s not even talk about that song.

But Scottish media, such as it is, only reaches Scotland. Our problem at the moment is that every time we turn on the television or radio, we hear about England and how they are on track to win the World Cup. This would not happen in a normal country. We should not begrudge English football fans their moment of enjoyment, but neither should we, as a separate nation, be compelled to share in it whether we want to or not. Many of us wish the England team well, but a more detached reporting of their progress, and that of every other team in the competition, would be more appropriate in a normal country.

The problem is that the BBC broadcasts with the view of the majority of the UK in mind, which means it is, understandably, very focused on England. There was a similar presentation back in 2014 during the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. During the day, Radio 5 was the channel to follow the action. The coverage was good, but concentrated very much on the performance of individual English athletes. Welsh, Irish and Scottish athletes were mentioned, of course, especially if they won medals, but the main focus was on the English athletes. In the evenings, it was possible to switch to Sportsound on BBC Radio Scotland where the emphasis shifted. It must also be said that the Sportsound team, who generally commentate on football and rugby, brought a light-hearted and informal, if very pro-Scottish, view to their commentaries.

Which brings us back to the inescapable fact that Scotland’s media is not normal. We know broadcasting is not devolved because that would mean a loss of control of the news narrative from Westminster, but the other result of this is that our sports coverage is also Anglo-centric. In the days of the old Home Internationals, Scottish viewers would hear Scottish commentators when Scotland played England. Now, when England play other teams, we hear only the English perspective. It is easy to say this shouldn’t matter, but any sporting fan will tell you that listening to your greatest rivals go on about how good they are is a real turn off.

Now I’m off to watch the World Cup. And, as usual, I’ll be rooting for Brazil.

the #VIVID campaign (Visual Images for the Visually Impaired Described) has struggled to gain momentum, but I’ve had some success at individual levels and many of the people I follow on Twitter now add descriptions to their pictures as a matter of course. Some occasionally forget, while others steadfastly refuse to participate, but the response from most people who learn about it has been superb. I and other visually impaired Tweeters are really grateful for these demonstrations of inclusiveness.

If you haven’t heard about Image Descriptions, you are probably wondering what they are and why they are so important.

The first thing you need to know is that many visually impaired people use smartphones or tablets to participate in social media. They do this using aps known as Screen Readers which read aloud the text on the screen when the screen is touched by a finger. Navigation is achieved through a variety of taps and swipes on the screen. Using a screen reader, any blind person can read Tweets with no difficulty. The problem arises when they come across a picture which, of course, is completely meaningless, and is reported to them as “Image". This is particularly frustrating when the tweet has no text to provide context.

Fortunately, Twitter have a facility which allows sighted users to add descriptions to the pictures they post. These descriptions are added behind the scenes but are detected by Screen Readers and read aloud, enabling the visually impaired Tweeter to understand what is being discussed. As someone who has no vision at all, I cannot stress enough what a difference this makes to our sense of involvement.

So, how do you add these descriptions? There’s a link to the official Twitter instructions at the end of this article, but here are the main points to bear in mind.

The setting will be in your Twitter User Menu under Settings, then Accessibility. Image descriptions can be found near the end of the list. Enable it, then save the settings if necessary.

After that, each time you select a picture to add to a Tweet, there will be an extra button marked something like, “Add Image Description" depending on what sort of device and software you are using. Click this, type a description of the picture, select “Apply", then post your Tweet as normal.

It’s as easy as that. The hardest part is remembering to add the description, since the system means it is easy to forget if you are in a hurry. Please take those few extra seconds to help out people who can’t see. You can regard it as one of your good deeds for the day.

There are some important points to keep in mind, though.

This function is not available if you use a Windows phone.

It doesn’t work if you access Twitter via the Twitter website on a phone or tablet. You need to use the standard Twitter app.

It doesn’t work if you access Twitter via a Third Party app such as Tweetdeck.

Other than that, you should be OK on any PC, phone or tablet, although the other quirk people have discovered is that if you use the shortcut Reply button to respond to a Tweet and then try to add a picture, it won’t let you add a description. You need to actually open the Tweet and select Reply from within the Tweet screen. The Image Description option will then magically appear.

As I say, it’s easy to do although it is not an ideal system, but it really does help anyone who is visually impaired and there are probably a lot more of us than you realise; it’s just that most VI people simply shrug and pass over Tweets with pictures rather than make a fuss about it, which is why you maybe don’t know about Image descriptions.

Finally, a few words on what to say when adding a description. Some people worry about this but, quite honestly, anything is better than nothing. If it’s a picture of someone well known, simply adding their name helps. If it’s a more complex picture, the more you can type, the better, but don’t get too hung up on it. For example, adding a description of, “Man sitting at a desk" is perfectly adequate. You could provide more detail and say, “Young man with fair hair, sitting at a desk and looking at a computer screen."

The best thing to do is imagine how you would like the picture described to you if you could not see it, but a short description is far, far better than nothing at all as long as it conveys some sense of what the picture shows.

Problems do arise when you post a screenshot of a Tweet. Because this is posted as a picture, the text in the Tweet you have photographed will not be read by a screen Reader. If you can, and if it is important to the point of your Tweet, it’s a great help if you can explain who the Tweet is from and what it says. At the very least, though, please say, “Screenshot of a tweet by …" so a visually impaired Tweeter knows something about it.

The same applies to images of long screeds of text.

Nobody is asking you to type all that out, but please explain what it is and what its significance is.

So there you go. Thanks for reading this far. Now please change those settings and start typing descriptions.

Here’s the link to the official Help pages on how to set it up for PC, Android and iOS devices:

The rumpus surrounding the vote in the House of Commons regarding whether or not to go ahead with a third runway at Heathrow has thrown up all sorts of interesting issues.

In Scotland, much of the focus has been on the fact that SNP MPs did not bother voting despite the Scottish Government previously indicating that it was in favour of the third runway.

Colonel Davidson took to social media to castigate the SNP for changing their minds and so placing a potential 16,000 Scottish jobs at risk. This seems an astonishingly high figure and some people have pointed out that it comes from a highly optimistic forecast produced by some business analysts employed by Heathrow to promote the third runway project. In fact, the forecast claims that up to 16,000 Scottish jobs could be created by the year 2050. That’s quite a forecast if it can see that far into the future and, of course, the words “up to" are notoriously flexible when it comes to such crystal ball gazing, including, as they do, the number 1.

The SNP also came in for some criticism from individuals living in England who were outraged that they should have a vote at all. I mean, how dare politicians from another country vote on issues affecting their neighbour? This attitude also suggests that some people don’t realise just how many flights there are between Scotland and Heathrow.

This, of course, is why the Scottish Government initially favoured the expansion at Heathrow. It is a view many of us disagreed with since we would prefer to see increased use of Scottish airports. Many people have pointed out that the largest export by weight from Heathrow is Scottish salmon which, by virtue of being routed via Heathrow, does not count as Scottish exports. Why can this, and other, produce not be flown out of the underused Prestwick airport?

Another issue raised was the estimated cost of £14 billion. It seems the Tories’ Magic Money Tree is always able to bear fruit when infrastructure costs are required in and around London.

As it turned out, of course, the SNP’s involvement in the vote would have been meaningless. The proposal passed by 415 votes to 119. Whichever way the SNP had voted, it would have made no difference to the outcome.

However, we should not shy away from criticising the SNP for abstaining. It was a fudge so that they could not be accused by Scottish businesses of voting against a proposal which might have produced more jobs and business for Scotland. Yet the decision rather undermines Ian Blackford’s assertion that the SNP would disrupt the business of Parliament in protest at how Scotland has been treated by the UK Government. Unless the SNP knew in advance that the vote would be so one-sided, their votes against the proposal might have created problems for the UK Government. Equally, if they were confident that the proposal would carry with such a majority, voting against it would not have altered the outcome but might have sent a signal that they were against a vanity project which Brexit may yet render a waste of time.

But now the Heathrow runway can be added to the ever-growing list of things Scotland will need to contribute to but which will probably bring little benefit to Scotland. Heathrow does have an advantage over things like the London sewers, the London Crossrail link, and HS2 in that some flights to Scotland might be able to take advantage of the extra capacity, but anyone who believes that a possible benefit for Scotland featured in the UK Government’s thinking hasn’t been paying attention to what is going on in Westminster.

The letter below, purportedly written in 1844, has been circulating on social media for a few days, and has been kindly transcribed for this site by @Lara_Scotland. It has proved difficult to verify the context or provenance of the text, although the linguistic style does suggest it is authentic. It is certainly very passionate and strongly worded. If genuine, it confirms that strong feelings about Scotland’s place in the UK have been around for a very long time.

"Of yore, Scotsmen required no stimulus to prompt them to instant and energetic exertion, when their rights were trampled on, and their national honour invaded. How much stronger is the necessity *now* for our resuming a portion of the spirit of our ancestors, when our fatherland, in consequence of being united to England, has been sunk into a *contemptible province*, stripped of her very name, deprived of the power to remove those crying evils which afflict her, both socially and politically and when she is left with no other memorials of her former dignity and independence but the moss-covered ruins of her palaces and citadels, whose gigantic fragments but all too emphatically tell what Scotland once was, and what she now is.

Never was the destruction of an ancient state more complete and humiliating than that of Scotland; - never did a people consent so tamely to surrender their liberties, and submit themselves to the overbearing dictation of another kingdom, as the Scotch have done. No amount of prosperity, whether commercial or agricultural, can excuse or palliate *mean* conduct like this; and however much we may boast ourselves of our enlightenment, and the pretended happiness we enjoy under English rule, were our unpolished, but brave, honest, and shrewd Scottish ancestors to rise from their graves, and to behold in us their descendants the wreck and prostration of that glorious principle of nationality which burned so intensely in their bosoms, and for which they so often enthusiastically fought and bled, they would utterly disown and despise us.

So the EU Withdrawal Bill has passed through the UK Parliament, complete with the Power Grab clause which will allow Westminster to neuter the Scottish Parliament in order to fully exploit Scotland’s resources so they can bolster the failing economy of post-Brexit UK. All the fuss about the unelected Lords making a difference, all the bluster of the Tory rebels and all the sanctimonious twaddle from Labour about a Brexit that works, came to nothing as the Tories rammed through their dream of isolationism and xenophobia.

Where does this leave Scotland? Quite frankly, there doesn’t seem to be much that can halt Brexit now. The Irish Border issue may yet scupper things, but that’s looking increasingly unlikely. If the Tories can turn a blind eye to Parliamentary sovereignty, they can surely persuade enough Labour MPs to back them in order to override the concerns of the DUP.

Apart from that, only independence can prevent Scotland from being dragged down with the rest of the UK. Let’s hope Nicola Sturgeon has got a sound strategy worked out because there is little doubt Theresa May will refuse to agree to a referendum.

The future is looking messy, whatever happens, but a future as a normal country, difficult as it might be, surely can’t be as bleak as the future that awaits us if we pay heed to the media and stick with the UK.

As usual, the arguments being put forward by Unionists about the Power Grab are designed to cloud the real issue. They claim it cannot be a Power grab because the Scottish Government currently has no control over decision-making by the EU. If the powers don’t currently reside at Holyrood, how can Westminster be grabbing them?

It’s a semantic argument and misses the real point of the issue.

Quite simply, if Westminster retains control of these powers after Brexit, they will be able to override the Scottish Government on issues like fracking, food quality standards, GM crops, animal welfare and more. To say that it will only be for a period of seven years is a red herring. Look at the damage done to society by the Tories in the past eight years. If anyone thinks Scotland will be able to reverse seven years of Tory control over our environment, they must have been asleep since 2010.

So, whether you want to call it a Power Grab or anything else, it’s vitally important that it does not happen. And the way things are going, there’s only one possible way of escaping it.

The constitution of the UK is coming under ever-increasing scrutiny, yet even legal experts can’t agree on the current status of the relationship between Scotland and England, nor how it could be terminated in the event that Scotland were to become a normal country.

One view holds that, when the Scottish Parliament voted to dissolve itself in 1707 and pass all responsibility for government to the slightly expanded Westminster, then this meant that Westminster held absolute authority which the Devolution settlement of the late 20th Century did nothing to alter since the constitution remained a reserved matter. If this argument is accepted, then Scotland can do nothing to alter the constitution without Westminster’s approval. Some even go a stage further and claim that it was not only the Scottish Parliament which was dissolved when the Treaty of Union was signed in 1707, but that the nation of Scotland also effectively ceased to exist as a distinct entity, although strangely, the same does not usually seem to apply to England by those putting this idea forward.

There is, however, another view, and this has been receiving a fair bit of attention recently with many people claiming that the Union was created by a treaty and that treaties can be dissolved by either party to the agreement. Recently, an explanation of this argument was posted in a Facebook discussion in the form of an address to Ian Blackford MP, leader of the SNP at Westminster. Rather than paraphrase, here is that post, attributed to a certain Gordon Blackhall and kindly copied for this blog by Andrew Davidson.

“The Act and Treaties of Union is a Union of 2 EQUAL PARTNERS.

It is also a condition of Union that one partner cannot subjugate the will of the other. (That would mean they are NOT equal, which is clearly the opposite of the Act’s Wording.

That’s before we factor in Scots law and Sovereignty of the People of Scotland, both of which are legally protected by the very Act and Treaties of Union itself.

Any breach of those 2 aspects is also a breach of the Union, ending it.

So why, you may ask, has Scotsgov not invoked these breaches of the Act?

Simply put, because, technically they have not happened yet.

The Continuity Bill has not yet been legally challenged as yet (a lawyers letter stating possible intent, is NOT an advancement of legal action, it is merely at this stage, posturing) so there has been no subjugation of Scots law as yet.

This will change with the passing of the Brexit Bill without Scottish Legislative Consent Motion (subjugation of the Sovereign Scots people’s expressed desire re: devolution, voted for by plebiscite) or by any ACTUAL court case challenging the Holyrood Continuity Bill (Subjugation of Scots Law by way of over writing it, contrary to the terms of the Act and Treaties of Union, which specifically protect Scots law “in perpetuity" (forever).

The Brexit Bill has yet to be passed as yet either, but the legal intent will be known by the time it is required to be send to the EU for ratification by EU 27.

That legally approved statement of intent is also a reasonable legal trigger for Scottish action to claim that WM has breached the terms of the Act and Treaties of Union by means of Subjugation of Scots Law, in respect of WM not having Legislative consent from Holyrood, and WM over writing Scots Law with WM law, in respect to the Holyrood Continuity Bill regarding the 111 powers under dispute, which the Continuity Bill lays legal claim to under Scots Law, based on the principle of Devolution, “what is not specifically reserved is Devolved".

Because Devolution is the Express will of Sovereign Scots by plebiscite, any over ruling of the Continuity bill is both subjugation of Scots people’s sovereignty AND subjugation of Scots Law which wrote the Continuity Bill, claiming legal rights over the 111 powers which clearly fall under the Devolved powers remit.

The above is all about TIMING, go too early, and a legal challenge will fail.

This is why WM have tried to provoke the Scotsgov into a mistake on timing so they can claim legal incompetence.

Yesterday, I posted an article explaining why I thought the SNP MPs needed to remain at Westminster and put up with the contempt and abuse in order to create a case for saying they had tried, but failed, to work within the Westminster system. As everyone knows by now, this opinion was out of date within thirty minutes of posting as the SNP staged a walkout. At time of writing today’s piece, I’m not sure whether they will have resumed their seats having made their point or whether it will be a permanent walkout. I suspect they’ll be back in the Commons for the reasons I outlined yesterday, but who knows?

One thing I did get right was the media reaction which has largely, although not exclusively, been to push the Tory narrative that the walkout was a stunt.

There is no doubt that Ian Blackford intended to disrupt Prime Minister’s Questions. The timing of his request for a vote makes that perfectly clear. However, claims that the entire thing was a pre-planned stunt presuppose he knew the Speaker would expel him from the House when he was abiding by House rules. That seems unlikely. Unless he was in collusion with the speaker, the expulsion cannot have been pre-planned since the rules back Mr Blackford’s position, even though he was making unusual use of his rights.

Whatever happened, the walkout has achieved its purpose, which was to highlight the democratic outrage currently taking place in Westminster. The media has been doing its best to downplay the looming constitutional crisis, keeping many Scots ignorant of what has been happening, but now they are forced to admit that something serious is going on. Whether their spin will backfire on the SNP remains to be seen, but their walkout has raised the bar. It has also resulted in nearly two thousand new Party members as people realise that we are facing a critical moment.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. After yesterday’s events, I’m not going to try to make any more predictions.

Nobody should really be surprised by what happened in the House of Commons yesterday. The Tories have shown time and again that they have no intentions of listening to Scotland and of forging ahead with Brexit whatever the cost. Labour, meanwhile, adopted their usual stance of abstaining on the Devolution vote, with some of their MPs even voting alongside the Tories on some of the other amendments.

We were told that the reason for Brexit is that Parliament wanted to take back control, but it has instead shrugged when offered the chance and decided to allow Tory Ministers to do whatever they want without the need for Parliamentary approval. There was talk of some Tory rebels voting against the Government but, as usual, they chickened out at the last moment, allegedly because they believed some promises made by Theresa May on concessions she would allow in the next draft of the Bill. Based on her track record, it seems unlikely those promises will be kept, but they have achieved their purpose.

As for the so-called debates, when the farcical voting system was taken into account, MPs had a whole 15 minutes to debate the Devolution amendment. The Tories got up to their usual trick of talking out the time.

The entire thing was a fiasco, a mockery of democracy, and an insult to Scotland. The Tories’ response to a complaint lodged by Ian Blackford, SNP leader at Westminster, was to advise him, and presumably every other Scot who doesn’t like what they are up to, to commit suicide. Given the number of desperate people who have already been driven to take their own lives by Tory Austerity, that comment is, quite frankly, sickening.

There was a great deal of outcry on social media, with many people stating that the SNP MPs should now walk out of Westminster since there is no chance of them ever being listened to. That is an understandable reaction but, tempting as it seems, it is one the SNP will probably resist.

There are sound reasons for them to stay where they are and, frustrating as it must be for them, to continue to try to work within the bizarre framework imposed by Westminster. That’s because the path the Tories are careering down is bound to bring about another IndyRef.

Brexit is not going to be stopped now, so dissolving the Union is the only course left to Scotland unless we want to go down with the sinking ship that the UK is becoming.

But if the SNP walk out of Westminster now, this would give the media an opportunity to paint them as acting on grievance and going into a sulk before the full Parliamentary process has taken place. The fact that this process has already excluded Scotland won’t matter because the media will want to paint the SNP as the ones at fault.

However, once Brexit becomes an absolute inevitability and the Withdrawal Bill process has been completed, the Scottish Government will be able to demonstrate that the SNP have repeatedly tried to work within the Westminster rules and been denied at every stage. They will then be able to say, with complete justification, that they have no alternative but to call for another IndyRef. So, hard as it may be to put up with the constant barrage of insults thrown at them, a walkout is not the best thing to do . Yet.

The BBC’s Sarah Smith continued her anti-SNP efforts at the weekend, spending her time at the SNP conference asking politicians which team they would be supporting at the World Cup, and taking to Twitter to gleefully announce that most would not be supporting England. Her motivation for conflating football rivalry with racism is pretty clear, and it is a sad indictment of the state of our media when such things are deemed newsworthy.

One wonders whether this sort of nonsense happens in other countries. I don’t recall any Plaid Cymru politicians being asked which team they were supporting in the Scotland vs England cricket match, nor am I aware that Italian politicians are being asked by Swiss journalists whether they will be supporting Switzerland.

Now, it’s true that football has an issue with racism, but that doesn’t mean every football fan is a racist. And failing to support your greatest rivals is hardly unique to Scottish football fans. Does every Atletico Madrid fan wish Real Madrid well in European competitions? Will Dutch fans be supporting Germany in the World Cup? These are very silly questions indeed, and it is rather pathetic that anyone at the BBC should try to create a story out of it.

Sadly, Brexit has unleashed the latent xenophobia and racism which has always been an underlying problem within British culture. Every nation has its share of bigots and racists, but this trait is now deemed acceptable by large parts of the UK media and public. On the same day that Sarah Smith was touting her nonsense, supporters of the jailed Tommy Robinson were attacking Police and making Nazi salutes in London. For some reason, the BBC did not deem this as newsworthy as Scottish politicians not fervently backing England in football matches.

But the issue is that racism is now so openly flaunted that it is something which is well understood by a disappointingly large proportion of the UK public. If Sarah Smith tells them that supporters of Scottish independence are racists, it is something many people can very easily relate to. Even the majority of people who deplore racism see it so often in their newspapers and on television that they can instantly understand the message they are being sent. The Scots hate the English; that is all independence is about. They will naturally react with horror and disgust, and so are able to dismiss any of the rational arguments put forward by those they now believe are racists.

Of course, we know the truth is that most people in Scotland, whether they support independence or not, have English friends and relatives. If we happen to dislike any of those relatives, it’s not because they are English, but probably for the same sort of reasons we dislike some of our fellow Scots.

Unfortunately, this smear attempt will not end here. We can expect a lot more of it as the mainstream media becomes more and more desperate to damage the case for independence. They know the UK is coming apart at the seams, and they will stoop to any levels in their attempts to hold it together.

“It means we’ll have control over all the things the EU currently legislates on."

“So that means we’ll have full control over things like farming, fishing, environment and the like?"

“No, we’ll be looking after those things for you. We’re taking back control."

“But those things are devolved. You can’t take back control of things you said we control."

“Yes, we’re taking back control. We need to set up UK-wide frameworks."

“Fine, but those frameworks need to be agreed between us because those areas are devolved."

“Don’t worry, we won’t do anything unless you agree."

“OK, so let’s set out the terms of how they will be handled."

“We’ve already drafted that. Look, here it is."

“But this says you are in control of everything and don’t need our consent!"

“Yes, we’re taking back control."

“But those are devolved areas of responsibility! We are not going to agree to that."

“Yes you are."

“But you said you wouldn’t do anything without our consent."

“We assume you will give your consent because that’s how the UK constitution works. “

“We are not agreeing to any of this!"

“Suit yourselves. We’re doing it anyway."

“You do realise this will create a constitutional crisis?"

“No it won’t. Our pals in the media will make sure everyone knows there is nothing to worry about. People in Scotland don’t want a second referendum, so they’ll accept whatever we tell them."

“No they won’t. You’ve told too many lies in the past few years."

“So what? They’ll believe whatever we tell them. Why do you think we won’t let you have control of the media? Mugs! Now why don’t you toddle back to the most powerful devolved parliament in the universe and stop making such a fuss. We are rather busy at the moment. We need to get on with the Brexit negotiations."

I was fortunate enough to attend a meeting arranged by Yes Perth yesterday. The room was packed as we listened to an excellent talk by David Hooks (aka @PoliticsScot) on the subject of the Scottish media. This was followed by some great discussion as questions and suggestions were put forward by a very engaged and politically aware audience. I think most of us came away with a positive feeling and some excellent ideas for how to challenge the media narrative.

Reframing the arguments to force people to make the case for the Union instead of us having to defend the case for independence was very much the big idea to take away from the evening.

There was, I believe, also an acceptance that we will not be able to alter the way the media, and in particular the BBC, operates. We cannot prevent them getting their message out, but we can help fight that message.

One way we can do this is to contribute towards the various pro-Indy media sites which are always in need of financial support. I still pay my TV licence because, although I don’t watch much TV myself, other members of my household do. Also, there are still a handful of good programmes on the BBC. I do enjoy some of the comedy panel shows, and their nature documentaries remain world class. It is the News output I refuse to watch. Yet I can’t dictate that my licence fee is only used to fund certain programmes, so my own solution is to make sure I donate an equivalent amount of money to the various pro-Indy media sites over the course of the year. That way, I reckon I’m giving more to pro-Indy news than to BBC news.

Of course, everyone needs to find their own solutions. Some people are well suited to having one to one conversations and using gentle persuasion; others can help spread the word through public events or writing blogs; many will make the effort to attend marches and demonstrations. It is all part of the campaign which will be won by the grass roots because the only way we can tackle the mainstream media message is by making our own message highly visible and audible.

Keeping in touch and sharing ideas is also important, so I’m glad I was able to get to Perth yesterday. Thanks to William Duguid for arranging the meeting and to everyone who attended. It was nice to escape the online world for once and find a group of like-minded and very real people. Hope to see you all again soon.

I had some interesting responses to a Tweet I posted last week about a conversation between two pensioners which was overheard on a bus. The point I was trying to make is that a lot of people don’t seem to appreciate or even realise how fortunate they are that the Scottish Government maintains a stance of providing so many free services. It was retweeted a fair bit and, as you’d expect, came in for some criticism.

The negative responses fell into three categories. The most common reply was to assert that I had invented the conversation to make a point. There’s not a lot I can say to argue with this since it boils down to my word against that of other people who have already made up their minds. All I can say is that the story was told to me by an eyewitness whom I trust implicitly. What I found odd, though, was that calling me a liar was sometimes the first argument put forward by people who actually had far more valid grounds to argue against my original comment.

That’s because many people quite rightly reminded me that the various free things I had mentioned had actually been introduced by previous Labour Governments. I can only hold my hands up and admit they are right. I’ll be sure to remember that in future.

But it’s the third category I think is worth responding to in far more detail than Twitter allows. It is factually correct but, in my view, rather pedantic. It is that none of the things mentioned, i.e. transport, healthcare and prescriptions, are free because they are paid for out of taxes. One person seemed quite indignant that her taxes were being used to fund such things, but perhaps I misinterpreted her angry reply.

Now, it is true that every service provided by any Government is funded out of taxation or Government borrowing. Whether it is healthcare, policing, pensions, or nuclear weapons, if the Government funds it, then taxation / borrowing is where the money comes from.

But that rather misses the point. When we say healthcare is provided free, we mean it is free at the point of use by anyone who needs it, irrespective of whether they have ever paid any taxes themselves.

Education is a good example, since we know Scottish students who attend university pay no additional fees for the tuition, while those in England do, normally by running up large student loans. The actual education provision in Scotland is funded by Government but, as far as individual students are concerned, they pay nothing and so it is “free".

I’m not sure why so many people seemed upset at me saying such things are free. Perhaps it is because, in the UK, we are taught via the media that taxes are a bad thing and that people who live off the state are scroungers. This is strange since everyone knows that it is our taxes that pay for the vital public services we all want and need. It would be nice if the culture of self-interest could be shifted so that people took pride in paying more tax in the knowledge that their contributions were funding things for the public good, although whether that situation could ever arise in the UK seems rather doubtful given the current dominance of Right Wing thinking in UK politics.

It is, though, this attitude of self-interest which convinces so many people who are less well off to keep voting Tory. The lure of maybe escaping poverty through hard work seems to attract voters in England even though all the evidence suggests that such an escape is highly unlikely. In fact, you are more likely to suffer an accident or health issue which leaves you disabled than you are to join the ranks of the wealthy. I often wonder how people’s attitude towards taxation and public services alters when something bad does happen to them. Believe me, it is when such problems hit you that you really begin to appreciate the free provision of services.

Then there is the whole issue of where a Government’s spending priorities should lie. We are already seeing the effects of spending cuts on the NHS in England, something we have, so far, been protected from. But it goes further than that. The extension of free prescriptions to everyone actually helps in the longer term since people on low incomes are not forced to choose between paying for essential medication or paying for food, rent or heating. If someone feels they cannot afford to pay for medication, they could well develop serious health conditions which could require hospitalisation. It’s very much a case of prevention being better than cure.

As for those, like Colonel Davidson, who argue that people who can afford to pay for things like prescriptions, their own argument about taxation should answer them, since those on higher incomes will already be paying more in tax. The whole point of a universal system is that everyone benefits when they need it.

So, well done to Labour for introducing such things as free healthcare, and well done to the SNP for extending and maintaining the free provision of health and education services as well as all the other things like policing that we take for granted. And let’s hope that, one day, we might live in a society where people take pride in paying their taxes so that everyone can benefit.

Say what you like about the report by the Sustainable Growth Commission, it has shown two very important things.

The first is that the Yes movement is full of people who are prepared to criticise official recommendations and come up with ideas and suggestions of their own. The report has sparked discussion and that can only be a good thing.

The second is that the unionists are prepared to criticise but have no alternative ideas to put forward. Their comments have been largely confined to saying there should be no second IndyRef and that Nicola Sturgeon should get back to the day job. These are not exactly inspiring policy ideas.

The Unionists have, however, wheeled out their favourite economics pet food business owner to produce “evidence" that adopting the recommendations of the SGC would require 67 years before an independent Scotland could match the economic performance of the comparative countries mentioned in the report. Now, even if these figures are accurate – which seems unlikely given that economic experts in the OBR can’t forecast the UK’s actual economy three months ahead, let alone a potential economy of a state which doesn’t yet exist – they still don’t present a strong argument for not following the recommendations. It could be argued that 67 years is a relatively short time in which to undo the damage of 311 years of control by Westminster which has included, across the centuries such methods as depopulation, deportation, suppression of culture, exploitation of resources, de-industrialisation and Austerity. And just because the current generations will not see the benefit of progress is no excuse not to begin that process for the sake of our grandchildren.

Others are getting in on the act by claiming that the SGC report does not mention social justice. That’s true, but it was charged with producing a report on ways to grow the economy of an independent Scotland, not with producing a report on social justice.

But let’s put all that nonsense aside and look at areas where there has been some proper criticism of the report from within the Yes community.

The recommendation to use sterling has been the most highly criticised feature, and I was one of those who was disappointed by this particular aspect. However, having now read the report, it is not as hard and fast as some have suggested. There would always need to be a transition period for moving to a new Scottish currency, and the report sensibly suggests that steps be taken to establish the proper economic infrastructure for that to take place should it be decided it is in Scotland’s best interests to move to a new currency. I think the recommended transition of 5 to 10 years is a lot longer than many of us had hoped for, but the discussions which have already begun may yet shorten that period considerably.

However, even if these recommendations are followed, Scotland using sterling is not a complete disaster. It would place Scotland in a similar position to countries like Finland and Luxembourg who use the Euro, where decisions on interest rates are taken by a larger economic unit which may not be the decisions they would have taken if they had their own currency. I would prefer not to use sterling for the same reasons I would prefer not to use the Euro; because having our own currency gives us greater control over our own economy which I feel will be important in a newly independent country. While I understand the argument put forward by the SGC, I think they are being over-cautious. Other newly independent countries have introduced their own currencies very soon after becoming independent. I appreciate that Scotland’s use of sterling can be viewed as relatively unique because sterling is one of the major international currencies, but I would definitely prefer a much shorter transition period than the SGC has suggested.

Other than currency, there are a few things the SGC report glossed over or did not mention. The establishment of a social welfare programme was one, and the comment that the Scottish Government would need to work to ensure smooth trade with both the UK and the EU rather misses the point that those are, in the current circumstances, mutually exclusive. Again, though, this is an economic report, not a political one – at least ostensibly – and the decision as to whether to remain in the UK or remain in the EU will be decided on political grounds even if economic factors form a significant part of the debate.

I did like the idea of establishing an airport Hub, with Prestwick being an obvious location for this, but I was disappointed that there was barely a mention of ports. I mentioned some months ago on this blog site that developing our ports would be beneficial in terms of job creation and establishing international trade routes. This, I argued, would be especially important if England decides it will remain outside the Single Market and Customs Union while Scotland remains in the EU. To avoid routing goods via the hard borders England may or may not be capable of imposing, Scotland needs other ways of exporting directly to other European nations. Imagine my delight when I noticed that, quite independently, other people have mentioned this in the online discussions which the SGC report has already sparked.

I’d also like to take issue with the comments on Corporation Tax which suggest that Scotland would need to match the low rates of Ireland and the UK. This is something analysis of various rates of Corporation Tax across Europe has shown is not necessary. There is no problem with having progressive rates of Corporation Tax which might, on the face of it, seem enough to persuade larger businesses to locate their operations in your neighbouring country, especially if you provide alternative incentives like, for example, high rates of Capital Allowances to encourage larger businesses to constantly invest in updated equipment, plant and machinery. This not only reduces their tax bill, but also ensures their operations are at the forefront when it comes to having modern facilities.

These things, and many others will be debated for many weeks and months to come. That can only be a good thing as we try to decide what sort of country we wish to become. Economic arguments are not all that underpins the case for independence, but the SGC report is an impressive piece of research which allows us to discuss economic issues armed with some facts. It is telling that nobody on the unionist side of the argument has come up with anything approaching this level of analysis.

However, we have seen, to our cost, that referendums and elections are not won by facts. Our case must be based on more than economic forecasts because issues like the UK’s democratic deficit, social justice, healthcare, food standards, energy policy, tackling poverty and a whole host of other things are vitally important. But, this report, whether we agree with all of its recommendations or not, provides the evidence that, unlike our opponents in the Indy argument, we have some credible options to choose from on the economic front.

So, well done to the Sustainable Growth Commission. This document could mark the beginning of that positive case for independence we were looking for.

I had a wee rant yesterday about the Sustainable Growth Commission’s report not being accessible. Sadly, this is something visually impaired people are all too familiar with. Many websites are very difficult to navigate despite accessibility being a legal requirement. To be fair to the Growth Commission, their website was fairly basic and easy enough to find the various headings and links, but the way their report was presented meant that anyone using a PC Screen Reader is unable to read the report on their PC. I should mention that there are several different Screen Readers available. I use JAWS which is widely regarded as the top of the range, yet it simply told me the page I had opened was an empty document.

This sort of thing is very frustrating. I could not find a link on the web page to contact the Growth Commission to ask for a different format, so I tried the Scottish Government’s web page, only to discover that it, too, was extremely difficult to navigate, having a plethora of Headings and Links which just seemed to go round in circles. Once again, I was unable to locate any way to ask for help.

As I mentioned, this is not uncommon. I’ve had similar problems in the past with other Government websites. For example, I wanted to read the UK Government’s Brexit White Paper which was produced over a year ago. It, too, was completely inaccessible. There was, however, a link to an email address where alternative formats could be requested. I submitted a request but, nearly two years later, I am still waiting for a response.

The Scottish Government has done little better. The recent Consultation on Voting Reform is a case in point. An appeal was put out via RNIB for blind and partially sighted people to participate in the Consultation, so I sat at my PC and tried to download the document. All I was told was, “This file is not compatible with your screen reader". That’s JAWS, one of the very best, if not the best, Screen Readers available anywhere in the world. Yet the Consultation was inaccessible. Fortunately, there was a contact email and, once I’d explained the problem, the staff there were very helpful. They sent me a Word version which I was able to complete and submit via email. The issue, though, is that this should not have been necessary. It is not all that difficult to create a fully accessible website.

Some websites are very easy to use. Sadly, it is usually the larger corporations and official bodies who create inaccessible websites. I am not going to name names, but some of the online stores everyone uses are a nightmare to find your way around.

As for the Sustainable Growth Commission’s Report, the good news is that I have found a way to read it. Finding it via a Safari search on my iPhone was the hardest part, with the search bringing up dozens of media articles explaining all the things that are wrong with the Report’s conclusions, but none of them actually giving a link to the report itself. I did find one eventually, and, to my great relief, my iPhone’s Voiceover Screen Reader was able to read the text. I presume Android’s Talkback and Amazon’s VoiceView can do the same.

There are, though, a few problems with using Voiceover. Navigation is the first, with the normal swipes leaping through the report in odd ways. The biggest problem, though, is that if you stop the screen reader for any reason – like wanting to use your phone for anything else, it can sometimes revert to the beginning of the report when you go back to it. This means scrolling, page by page, and trying to guess how far through the report you are. Imagine reading a paper book, knowing you were on Page 123 but, instead of simply opening the book at that page, you had to go back to Page 1, close your eyes and turn each page individually until you took a guess at how many pages you had turned and then started reading.

Now, I know many people may think that blind people must learn to accept there will be problems for them whatever they do. Believe me, I know that only too well. How many of you could make yourself a cup of tea with your eyes firmly shut all the time? But web accessibility is something that should be easy to resolve. I know that all Governments will turn the actual production of websites and reports over to specialist programmers, but those programmers need to be told that everything they produce must be fully accessible. The Scottish Government, in particular, often makes claims that it is trying to build a better, more inclusive country. I fully accept that there are some very serious issues which they need to tackle, but web accessibility is such an easy thing for them to accomplish with only a little bit of thought. I know it is lack of appreciation of the issue rather than deliberate decision which results in web inaccessibility, so hopefully someone, somewhere within the Scottish Government will read this and maybe do something about it.

OK, that’s the end of this little rant. I’m still only a quarter of the way through the Report, so I’d better get back to it. Then I can return to posting about politics.

I must admit that I have not yet read the Sustainable Growth Commission Report. I’ll explain why in a moment.

My initial reactions from the comments I have seen are that there seem to be quite a few good things in it, but that the question of a new currency has been fudged. I am very disappointed about this since I firmly believe Scotland needs its own currency if it is truly to break away from the Austerity economics of the UK. Sticking with sterling may appease those who fear change, but it will hamper our economic development.

Fortunately, this report does not yet form official policy since it is a discussion document, so hopefully we will see some shift in this. Nicola Sturgeon’s comments yesterday hinted that she might be receptive to an early adoption of a new currency. Let’s hope so.

However, the main thing that angers me now is that it seems I will not be able to read the report at all. This is because it has been published online in a format which is inaccessible to anyone using a Screen Reader. I managed to find the official website, located the link to download the report, and was presented with what my PC Screen Reader told me was a blank page. A sighted friend assures me that the report was on screen, but there was no way to read it or even copy the text into another document which might have made it accessible.

This is, unfortunately, all too common. Essentially, every blind person has been excluded from full participation in the discussions by being barred from reading the report. To say I am angry about this is an understatement.

Needless to say, there appears to be no way to contact the Growth Commission to request an accessible document, so I tried the Scottish Government’s website only to discover that it, too, is virtually inaccessible due to the way it is laid out. Finding anything on it is a complete nightmare.

I have therefore given up on this after nearly an hour of fruitless attempts to find an accessible version of the report or even any way to contact anyone in an official capacity who might be able to help.

With the Growth Commission Report about to be published, I’m sure we all know what to expect. Our televisions, radios, newspapers and social media feeds will be full of people desperate to tell us how wrong it is and, even if it were correct, why Scotland would still be better off as part of the UK.

I suspect the attacks will concentrate on a couple of areas. The obvious one is the currency. It is widely expected that the report will recommend a separate Scottish currency. This is eminently sensible and most Yessers understand the need for this approach. With full control of our monetary system and a Central Bank to control the money supply, we gain considerably more independence than we would if we clung to a currency union with the rest of the UK.

Naturally, though, any change will be pounced upon in order to frighten people who don’t like change. Issues over cross-border trade will be highlighted, although I doubt whether any of the people making these claims will admit that there has been cross-border trade and currency usage in Ireland for many years, and it has been managed perfectly well by the citizens of both Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The other thing they won’t mention is the disastrous change promised by Brexit which they have been trying to normalise. A change of currency will be demonised , while the gradual change of Brexit will be glossed over.

But a currency change is not a disaster. Much of Europe changed overnight to using the Euro, and the UK itself changed to a decimalised currency from the old Pounds, Shillings and Pence in the 1970s. The change went so smoothly that everyone was used to it within a couple of days. This is because these changes were planned in great detail, and information was provided to everyone well in advance. Not that this will stop Project Fear trying to scare people, but we need to be ready with the counter-arguments.

The other aspect I suspect we will see highlighted is the claim that Scotland can have a successful small economy, with the emphasis on “small". We know that any list of the best-performing world economies is dominated by small countries, and we know that Scotland has more natural resources than the majority of those countries, yet it is part of the UK psyche to dismiss small countries. The UK, once master of a world-dominating Empire, still thinks in terms of global power. The fact that the UK economy is suffering under the pressure of Brexit and performing less well than almost every other European country does not matter as long as the UK is seen to be a major player. For that reason, I expect the MSM to keep putting the emphasis on “Small" when discussing Scotland’s possible future. What they will try to do is equate large economies with healthy economies, although the two do not necessarily go hand in hand. Also, we should not forget that there are social issues at stake as well as economic ones. The question as to what sort of Scotland we want to live in is just as important as the issue of the economy.

So remember, small is beautiful. We have no desire to dominate the world, only to play our part. We want a thriving economy where poverty can be tackled, where money is not wasted on vanity projects and where tax evasion and money laundering are not condoned. In essence, all we want is to be a normal country, taking control of our own affairs. That is anathema to the UK mind-set, so expect some fireworks over the course of the next few days.

Comments by Tory MSPs on social media often garner ribald replies. One retort often aimed at them is that most of them have never actually won an election and are only at Holyrood by virtue of being on the List and gaining a seat thanks to the workings of the D’Honte voting system. While this taunt is perfectly accurate, it is one people really should stop using, and here’s my argument why.

The D’Honte system, combining some First Past The Post elements with proportional voting electing List MSPs has its faults, but all Parties are bound by its rules and all Parties have List MSPs at Holyrood. While the Tories may have a higher proportion than other Parties, this is no reason to go pointing the finger at them for being elected using the same system which has elected Labour, Lib Dem, Green and SNP MSPs.

In any case, what alternative system would you propose we use to make sure that only people who have won elections are seen at Holyrood? This line of argument implies that you’d prefer FPTP which, as everyone should know by now, is a very biased, unfair and unrepresentative system. It also tends to lead to two-Party dominance such as we’ve seen in Westminster and in the USA. No, we really don’t want FPTP elections to the Scottish Parliament, do we?

But the other alternative is to go with fully Proportional Representation. This is quite normal in many other countries, but it means that every elected politician would be a List MSP. Where does your taunting go then?

And is there really a problem with List MSPs? Let’s face it, most voters don’t vote for an individual to represent them, they vote for the Party based on the leader. This is why the Tories managed to get away with the absurd campaign which told people to vote for Ruth Davidson’s Party in the General Election when she wasn’t even standing for election. The ploy worked, though, because the media hyped the Colonel up so much, allowing the Tories to gain seats because voters voted for the Party rather than the individuals who were standing in the various constituencies. Nobody bothered about those individual candidates, they voted for a person they mistakenly believed was the leader. As things have turned out, of course, the Colonel has shown that she has absolutely no influence over “her" MPs at all; they simply do as they are told by the Whips in Westminster.

But, getting back to Holyrood, some people argue that nobody should be allowed to be elected to the Scottish Parliament as a List MSP more than once or twice. This, they argue, would remove freeloaders who dare not stand in a head to head election and whose competence is questionable. Now, I’ve already pointed out the unfairness of head to head elections for parliamentary bodies, but should we limit the number of times a person can stand as a List MSP?

On the face of it, this seems a very reasonable suggestion but, after some reflection on this, I think any restriction could create more problems than it solves. It may well get rid of some annoying characters, but they could well be replaced by people of even less ability – hard as that may be to believe. But look, for example at how the Tories are finding it necessary to retain councillors who have made openly racist or homophobic comments because they can’t find anyone else to represent them. By limiting the number of times an individual can stand, you run the risk of standards being lowered even further. Let’s face it, the barrel is being scraped already. It may be hard to believe, but the List MSPs representing the Tories at Holyrood are the best they have available. If we bar them from standing for re-election, who knows what calibre of candidate we might see in the future?

The final point on this is that changing the voting system is no guarantee that a better quality of politician would emerge. Look at Westminster, for example, to see how braying schoolboy antics are the order of the day. And look, especially, at the 13 Tory MPs who were elected to Westminster under the FPTP system. They have displayed dazzling ineptitude in their short time there despite having won head to head elections.

So please let’s not use being a List MSP as any sort of derogatory comment. It’s a cheap and easy shot, but we should be criticising poor MSPs for their performances, not for being elected under the PR format of the List. Head to head elections are fine if you win, but a proportional voting system is much more representative of the wishes of all the voters. What we need is a better quality of politician, not a different way of electing them.

Finland has provided Baby Boxes to new parents for over 70 years as part of a package of child healthcare. Finland has the lowest infant mortality rate in the world. Finnish Baby Boxes are good.

Some areas in the USA have decided to copy the Finnish model and are providing Baby Boxes to new parents. The US media agrees that American Baby Boxes are good.

Some Health Boards in England are providing Baby Boxes to new parents. The BBC assures the public that English Baby Boxes are good.

Canada has decided to begin providing Baby Boxes to new parents. Everyone agrees that Canadian Baby Boxes are good.

The Scottish Government recently began providing Baby boxes as part of an overall child healthcare package. But because these Baby Boxes are produced in Scotland, you should be in no doubt that they are very bad indeed. If you set fire to them, they will burn. Nothing else in your house is flammable; it is only the Baby Box which represents a fire hazard if you set a blowtorch to it. The Scottish media is in total agreement that Scottish Baby Boxes are bad.

Depending on which source you listen to, anything from 35,000 to over 90,000 people marched through Glasgow last weekend to show their support for the cause of Scotland becoming a normal country. There were hundreds of photographs and videos posted on social media and it is noticeable that, apart from the unpleasantness caused by a handful of Unionist counter-protesters who took pleasure in giving Nazi salutes, the whole affair went off without any trouble.

yet it is worth mentioning that, out of all the many photographs, one gaining a significant amount of publicity shows a banner referring to Tory Scum. Even now it is being reposted around Twitter on the grounds that it annoys the Tories, so is worth sharing.

A word of caution is necessary here, especially because another march is planned in Dumfries, a Tory heartland. Now, whatever you think of the Tories, and it must be said that the policies they delight in inflicting upon the whole of the UK are not those one would associate with anyone who cares for their fellow human beings, we really need to take more care about what we say, especially on prominent banners. Because the whole point of the march is in danger of being hijacked as the Tories and their media pals focus their outrage on this banner. They have neatly associated the march with the SNP even though it was a completely independent event, and are making sure that their own supporters see that the vile Nats are rude and nasty.

So let’s keep the insults in check as far as we can, because they should not be the topic of conversation. By giving the Tories a chance to deflect from the real issues, we are playing into their hands, and they are past masters at exploiting such things.

The march was a great success, no matter how many people attended nor how the media have attempted to portray it. Let’s hope the next one is just as successful in showing the depth of feeling among Yes supporters. But it is important that it goes off smoothly, peacefully, and gives the Unionists no possible excuse to paint the Yes movement as anything other than friendly and welcoming. We are not going to persuade any wavering Tory voters to change their minds by calling them scum. The way to change people’s minds is to point out that, while they may have felt justified in voting No last time, circumstances have changed. We can quite easily point out all the things they were told which have turned out to be untrue. If we do that, the Unionists have no arguments they can deploy, so let’s not give them anything they can use against us.

Yesterday saw the introduction of Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) on alcohol. It has been a long time coming, but it is here at last. Needless to say, the media, led by the BBC, were quick to allow critics of the scheme their chance to repeat all the things they think are wrong with this legislation. There was also a fair amount of comment on Social media, with some online polls suggesting that a significant majority of people think it will make no difference to drinking habits.

As with most controversial policies, many people are happy to point out individual cases where the legislation is unlikely to have any impact. For example, I noticed several people saying that MUP will make no difference to alcoholics who will continue to get their fix no matter the price, and that this will be at the cost of cutting down on expenditure on things like food.

This is a perfectly reasonable point, but it rather misses the issue behind MUP. Alcoholics are already addicts and, just like people who are addicted to drugs, cigarettes or gambling, no amount of price increase will have much effect on their addiction.

The other main comment I noticed was the equally valid remark that MUP will have no effect on better off people who have a problem with alcohol. If they can afford to drink to excess, they will.

In response to these points, I would say that MUP is not intended to affect the drinking habits of these people. Addicts need help with their addiction, while the problem of the better off drinkers will be best addressed through education and altering what is socially acceptable. Those are long term issues and need to be seen as part of an overall attempt to alter Scotland’s well-known problem with alcohol.

It is, of course, impossible to ban alcohol altogether, as the Prohibition era in America proved. And, let’s face it, many of us like a drink now and again. Problems of excessive drinking among the better off can only be addressed by changes in social attitudes, while MUP is intended to address the issue of young people being able to obtain strong alcoholic drinks at low prices. Yes, there are some loopholes in the legislation, but we should not forget that it is a policy which is backed by medical experts.

According to the SNP, there are, on average, 22 deaths directly linked to alcohol every week, plus nearly 700 injuries. That is a damning indictment on the effects of alcohol, so we really need to try to do something.

One important point is that there will always be critics of new legislation which is intended to alter social habits. Remember, for example, the furore over the smoking ban, the reduction in drink/drive limits and the charge for plastic bags. All were decried when introduced, with the media going out of its way to tell the public what terrible ideas they were.

Now, drink/drive statistics are easily manipulated, so it is difficult to say for certain whether that particular change has had any effect. Anecdotally, I know several people who have stopped drinking when they are driving because of the change, but we will need to see long term trends before we can judge the success or failure of this change. However, the stories of potential problems do not seem to have come true.

The charge for plastic bags has definitely made a difference to the environment as anyone can see simply by walking down the street, and the ban on smoking in public places has made visiting pubs and restaurants a much more pleasant experience for non-smokers. Importantly, the health benefits of this change are only now being seen by medical experts, more than a decade after the law was brought in. MUP may well require a similar timescale before we can evaluate its success. But if it can prevent even a handful of teenagers becoming alcoholics, it will have accomplished something beneficial.

Needless to say, MUP has made people pay more attention to the price of alcoholic drinks. There have been some comments on social media claiming that some retailers are increasing the prices of drinks which are already priced above the MUP requirement. This is all anecdotal at the moment, but the way modern retailers operate could certainly lead to unscrupulous increasing of prices which can be blamed on the Scottish Government. However, we should not forget that the fall in the value of sterling thanks to Brexit may well have been the cause of increases in the price of imported wines, so let’s not be too hasty to judge.

The final point I’d like to make on this is that problems with alcohol, tobacco and drugs are symptoms of poverty, not causes. The best way to tackle all three of these is to alleviate the poverty which affects so many of our fellow citizens. However, without the full range of economic and fiscal powers being available, the Scottish Government must try alternative ways to reduce the harm that these addictions cause. MUP is one way of attempting to do that. It may work, or it may not, but we need to give it time.

Of course, if we had the full range of powers which are available to normal countries, we should be able to do more to tackle these problems of addiction. If only there had been some way of achieving that.

So Carwyn Jones, First Minister of Wales, is happy to agree to Westminster’s Power Grab. After all, it’s only going to allow the UK Government seven years in which to dismantle devolution and pass laws on a range of devolved matters. Surely they can’t do too much damage in seven years, can they? After all, they haven’t done much damage to society in the past seven years.

One wonders what sort of thinking allows Carwyn Jones to adopt this stance. Has he, perhaps, been put under pressure by Jeremy Corbyn? Corbyn, after all, is very much a UK supremacist when it comes to matters of devolution, and he’s very keen on Brexit, so having the Welsh Government surrender to Westminster is very much in his interests.

But Carwyn Jones need not worry about the consequences of his decision. After all, he has announced he will be stepping down as First Minister of Wales in the autumn. Job done. It will be interesting to see what sort of reward he receives for his long service to UK politics. One thing he probably won’t be able to do for much longer is remain a member of the Welsh Parliament since the Power Grab will give Westminster the ability to scrap devolution entirely.

The BBC and other media in Scotland have pounced on the capitulation to Westminster’s demands to portray the Scottish Government as isolated and unreasonable for not agreeing to the same deal as Wales. This means that the wider population in Scotland remains ignorant of the danger facing us. Let’s hope the Scottish Government sticks to its guns on this because there is a very real threat that we will soon see the end of devolution as we know it. Westminster wants powers which could wreck the Scottish food and drink industry as well as causing much other damage. Fracking will be back on the agenda, along with reductions in animal safeguards and food standards. Everyone knows Scottish food produce is regarded as being among the best in the world, but agreeing to the Power Grab could end that.

It has been pointed out that the Withdrawal Bill is like a rapist’s charter; saying Yes is consent, saying nothing is consent, saying No is consent. And the Scottish media are blaming the potential rape victim for being unreasonable.

The way things are going, there are only two things that can save us from perpetual Tory rule and the wholesale savaging of Scotland’s agricultural and fishing industries. We can hope that the whole Brexit shambles collapses, which is still a possibility even though its likelihood is fading as time passes, or we can hope that enough scots wake up to what is going on to demand we scrap the Treaty of Union and become a normal country again.

All of a sudden, there’s loads to comment on in politics. We’ve had statistics about food bank usage, stories of people being driven to suicide by Tory Austerity cuts and Benefits systems, outrageous comments on the Rape Clause by Esther McVey, the UK refusing to raid the premises of a telecoms company accused of money laundering because they are major donors to the Tories, along with the usual BBC spin and blacking out of stories they don’t want us to hear like, for example, the latest spike in oil prices. And there’s Syria as well, with conflicting stories emerging about whether there really was a chemical attack or not.

With all this, and more, to choose from, I found three stories which, while unrelated, do have one thing in common. So bear with me while we run through them.

The first is the appalling scandal over the deportation of the descendants of the so-called Windrush immigrants. The more we learn, the more we see that Theresa May has been the driving force behind this dreadful state of affairs. As Home Secretary, she oversaw the deliberate destruction of documents which would have proved where these unfortunate people came from, then she introduced laws requiring them to produce documents which she knew they did not possess. We shouldn’t forget that pretty much every Party in the House of Commons voted for the new Immigration Law in 2014, with the notable exceptions of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens, but it was Theresa May who planned it all. The only reason she has offered her half-hearted apology is because she is suddenly realising that not everyone in the UK is a racist, and that most normal people are outraged by the fact that innocent people whose only fault is to have the wrong colour of skin are losing their jobs, losing Benefits and being deported to countries they may never have visited before in their lives. Even then, her apology and vague offer of compensation do not, so far, suggest that there will actually be any change in official policy. Any good distraction, such as an escalation of conflict in Syria or another spat with Russia will move the Windrush story off the front pages and May will be able to breathe again. Indeed, most newspapers are already shoving the story deeper into their news pages in an attempt to diminish the public’s outrage.

But, to get back to the point I wanted to highlight, in times past Theresa May’s deliberate lying to the House of Commons over who was responsible for the destruction of the documents would be a matter for resignation. In any normal democracy, her ineptitude would be a matter for her sacking. But times have changed, and politicians now believe, with some justification given events over the past couple of years, that they can lie with virtual impunity. Public outrage means nothing to them because they have the backing of multi-millionaire businesspeople and media barons. Theresa May’s days as Prime Minister may well be numbered, but her downfall will come about through internal Tory politicking rather than any public demand. Besides which, the prospect of having Jacob Rees Mogg replace her doesn’t suggest we would see any improvement in the calibre of our political elite, nor in the direction of official policies.

The second story is the news that Theresa May’s husband works for an investment company which is a major shareholder in BAE Systems and, thanks to the expenditure of BAE-built bombs and missiles in Syria, stands to make a fortune out of the illegal attacks the UK has carried out.

Now, it can be argued that what Theresa May’s husband does in his day job is nothing to do with political life, and that’s certainly the angle Tory supporters have been pushing. However, at the risk of becoming a history bore, the story of Caesar’s wife is worth recalling. You see, back in the days of the late Roman Republic before he seized ultimate power, Julius Caesar held the position of Pontifex Maximus, the chief religious office of the Roman State. His wife, Pompeia, hosted a religious festival in their official residence; a festival for women only, with no man being allowed to see what the ceremony entailed. However, one young nobleman dressed himself as a woman and sneaked into the building. He was discovered and scandal ensued. Although there was no suggestion that Pompeia had acted incorrectly in any way, Caesar divorced her on the stated grounds that, “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion". Of course, he may have had some ulterior motive for divorcing her, but his action is often cited as an exemplar of how public officials should behave. This is not to suggest that Theresa May and her husband should divorce, but to suggest that people in public life really should be held to very high standards of moral behaviour. Whether the fact that her husband stood to gain financially from her decisions had any influence on Theresa May is not the point. The point is that neither of them should ever have placed themselves in positions where such accusations could be made. Again, if this had happened twenty or thirty years ago, resignations would have followed.

The third story does not concern public figures but comes from a more local perspective. Police in Central Scotland are asking for help to identify a woman who verbally abused a 17 year old partially sighted girl who was using her phone on a train. Because she cannot see, the girl was using her phone’s Screen Reader to read aloud her text messages to her. A fellow passenger took exception to this and began shouting abuse at her before getting off the train at the next stop.

Now, as a blind person myself, I use Screen Readers all the time. I know from when I first got a smartphone and discovered it could read everything to me that it was amazingly liberating. Yet I quickly discovered that it annoyed my family members no end. All they could hear was my phone chattering away at high speed as I scrolled through texts, emails, Twitter feeds and Facebook. It’s a bit like sitting beside someone who is listening to a radio station you have no interest in. I soon developed the habit of wearing earphones to listen to my phone whenever anyone else was around. I view this as a courtesy to those around me who do not want to be disturbed, and I’d strongly recommend to any blind person that they adopt this practice.

So I can understand why a fellow passenger might have felt irritated at the noise coming from this young woman’s phone, but that is no excuse to start abusing the poor girl. A polite request to perhaps turn the volume down or to wear earphones was all that was required. Sadly, the woman’s reaction shows that anger is a commonplace response nowadays.

Which brings me to the point of this article. I’ve said before that our society takes its lead from those at the top. If our politicians behave in a way which can only be described as racist, if they lie and are allowed to remain in office, if their relatives are seen to be in a position where they can be accused of benefitting financially from their privileged position, and if the media support or even encourage this sort of behaviour, then the public who share those attitudes will feel empowered to behave in ways which would be regarded as socially unacceptable in a civilised society. Our media has ramped up the rhetoric of hatred in recent years, and our politicians have played up to that call. They trample on democratic rules, they ignore or demonise anyone who disagrees with them, and they play the divide and rule card all the time, fostering hatred.

Is it any wonder that a person should feel it is acceptable to hurl verbal abuse at a partially sighted teenager for the crime of simply listening to an audio feed of what her phone was telling her? This is only the latest example of many similar, and worse, cases of abuse. People have even been physically assaulted because of their ethnic origin.

The way to resolve this is for anyone who works in public office to be held to high standards of behaviour and to be removed from office if they fail to maintain those standards. Sadly, there is no sign of that happening in the modern-day UK. The Tories, actively enabled by their Lib Dem and Labour allies, have systematically demonised the poor, the disabled and the unemployed as well as foreigners. It can be no coincidence that tolerance for other people has waned to such an extent that people feel able to abuse their fellow citizens for the crime of being different.

Our political leaders need to set a much better example, but that is not the way the UK is going. Instead, it seems determined to become an isolationist State which allows xenophobes to thrive.

I spent a few days in Amsterdam last week. While I was there I got to thinking about my first trip to the city.

It was in 1969, I was almost 14. We travelled by car, 4 of us in an Austin Maxi with 2 tents on the roof-rack and a full boot. Dad drove all the way, as I don't think mum had learned to drive by then. The first leg was from Dundee to Harwich. We took the ferry from there to the Hook of Holland, drove to Amsterdam and got to the campsite.

The next day we drove south to a town called Vught, near to the better known city of 's-Hertogenbosch. We went straight to the Police Station where mum, who spoke excellent German went inside to explain why we were there and ask if they could help us.

We were looking for the family van Veghel, who had 3 daughters, Mia, Dina, Corri and a son, Berti. The Police couldn't have been more helpful; we followed a couple of officers in their police car round the houses, as van Veghel is a very common name in Vught so it was going to be a bit of a hit and miss trip. The first 2 or 3 houses we stopped at were misses, so we went on.

I think it was the 4th house we stopped at where an old woman came to the door and the Police explained why we were there. Dad had got out of the car and I remember him saying, 'I think I recognise you.'

Sure enough it was Moeder, the mother of the house. Her husband had died but Corri and her husband Jan van den Bos lived with her. Berti did too, his learning difficulties perhaps having made this necessary.

Dad hadn't seen them since 1944, when he had been billeted with them at one point during the 51st Highland Division's journey from Normandy to Germany.

We were invited in, and treated to lunch. It was all a bit strange; disorientating but exciting. We couldn't speak Dutch and Moeder couldn't speak English, but Corri and Jan had a bit of English and we could 'talk with hands and feet' as they put it.

The next day Corri and Jan came to the campsite in Amsterdam. They had told Dina, who lived in the area with her family to meet them there, but hadn't explained why. Dina came round the corner of our tent, looked at Dad and said, 'Bill!' so either she had a very good memory, or Dad hadn't changed much from his 19 year old self, or he'd made quite an impression when he'd been there before. Of course Dad wasn't just an ordinary soldier, oh no; he was a piper, or a 'doedelzakspeler' in Dutch. And, as he said in response to the innocently youthful question about his rank in the Army, too intelligent to be an officer.

I still have an image of that in my head, brightly lit by the sun. It was great day. Dina had married Jan de Vleger and had a daughter, Antonie. Jan was a joker so there was never a dull moment when he was around. I don't remember much of the specifics of the conversation, but I remember feeling comfortable with everyone and feeling emotionally linked.

At some point during our trip we met with Mia, her husband Ko and their daughter Inike. There seemed to be several occasions when we all met up, perhaps even on the way back from Germany after the second week of our holiday.

Jan and Corri visited us in Scotland. So did Jan, Dina and Antonie. We kept in touch and Dad went back in 1994 for the 50th Anniversary of the Liberation. Perhaps only then did he realise the enormity of the events he had participated in from June 1944, as he had been preoccupied at the time with surviving.

They are almost all gone now, that generation. Perhaps one day I'll take my children to Vught and meet up with the children and grandchildren of the van Veghels. I don't expect there to be any language difficulties, as between us we have French, German, Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Chinese. That's just my kids, I only have fluent Scots and swearie.

By the time I was 14 I'd holidayed in France, Holland and Germany and established family links in Europe. What chance did I ever have of not being a European?

If you’re not confused about what is happening in Syria and why, then you are either not paying attention or are only paying attention to the propaganda being pushed out by one side.

It’s a fast-moving situation, but here’s a round up of things so far.

Syria is bad. It is backed by Russia, which is very bad indeed. Anything either of these countries do is bad. Please forget that Syrian President Bashir Al-Assad visited the UK in 2002 and was invited to meet the Queen. That was back when he wasn’t as bad as he is now.

The Syrian Government is very bad now. They have been at war with Jihadi rebels for around seven years. These Jihadis are bad. They threaten the West, so they are our enemies. But they oppose President Al-Assad of Syria, so they are on our side. Sometimes. But sometimes they are not.

Sometimes we bomb these Jihadis, sometimes we supply them with weapons. We bomb them because they are our enemies, but we supply them with weapons because they oppose Al-Assad. Al-Assad is bad.

The recent crisis happened because the Syrian Government was about to capture a Jihadi-held town, so naturally decided to launch a chemical weapon attack in order to annoy the USA who were threatening to stop bombing them. The Syrian Government likes being bombed, so they needed to do something to annoy the Americans.

It worked.

Theresa May did not want to miss out on another chance to bomb some Muslims, even if it did threaten to start World War 3. Theresa May hates Russia because they are bad. She hates them so much she did not bother asking Parliament to vote on whether the UK should join America in bombing Syria again. Prime Ministers are allowed to do this sort of thing if the UK is under direct threat. Obviously, Syria is a direct threat because they send so many bloody refugees over here. We hate foreigners, so we need to bomb them to stop them leaving their home to come here.

So the UK and USA carried out another large raid, aiming for chemical weapons plants which the OPCW says were not chemical weapons plants. These buildings were destroyed although this failed to result in the release of clouds of deadly chemical gases, thus proving that the sneaky Syrians had hidden their chemical weapons which the OPCW said they didn’t have.

During these pinpoint raids, the US and UK bombs accidentally blew up a block of residential flats. This will teach the Syrian Government and the Russians (who are very bad) not to threaten the UK by attacking their own citizens with chemical weapons and forcing them to flee to the UK as refugees. Refugees are bad because they come here and take away our jobs while claiming Benefits because they don’t have jobs. People who claim Benefits are bad.

Remember, chemical weapons are bad unless they are used to disperse crowds of protesters in America or are dropped on Vietnam. Bombs are good, unless they are aimed at us. Killing people with chemical weapons is bad, but blowing them up with bombs is good. People who don’t believe the UK and American Governments are bad and are lying to you. The UK and American Governments never lie to you. That would be bad, and they are the good guys.

The Russians, meanwhile, say there was no chemical attack and that this attack, which they say didn’t happen, was actually carried out by the Jihadis, helped by MI6. Or perhaps MI5. But it didn’t happen anyway, so that’s not important. Unless it did happen.

Don’t believe the Russians. They are bad. The chemical attack definitely took place because there was a video of children suffering from the effects of a gas attack. This video was shot by the White Helmets who are either a humanitarian rescue group or supporters of the Jihadis who make fake videos. Or perhaps both. Or neither.

Doctors in the hospital where the video was filmed say there was no gas attack but that the video was real. This is incontrovertible proof that the UK was right to bomb Syria to teach them not to use chemical weapons they don’t have.

I hope that’s sorted it all out for you. If you have any other questions, Tweet them to Donald Trump. He will explain everything in a series of seemingly rambling and unconnected Tweets.

This is so that his enemies can’t work out what he is going to do next. Trump’s enemies are Syria, Russia, North Korea, the FBI, the CIA, the US media apart from Fox news, lawyers, porn stars, snowflakes, Mexicans, the Scottish Government, and any number of shithole countries.

After leaping to accuse Russia of the Salisbury nerve agent attack with apparently no real evidence, Theresa May is now itching to declare war on Syria with apparently very little actual evidence to support her. There are certainly some very distressing videos going around, but their provenance and authenticity has been questioned.

As with so many things of this nature, with both Russia and the UK / USA making claims and counter-claims, it is impossible for ordinary citizens of the UK to be absolutely certain of the truth.

What we can be absolutely certain of is that the UK is always ready to declare war on Middle Eastern countries who do not play ball with us in trade terms. Picking on Syria is, however, a dangerous game given their close alliance with Russia. It is no exaggeration to say that World War 3 could be triggered if either side does anything reckless.

As for the justification for this belligerence, a chemical attack is a horrible thing. Yet, as some respected commentators with international diplomatic experience have pointed out, this chemical attack bears a remarkable resemblance to the one carried out when Barak Obama was President. In both cases, with President Assad’s forces on the brink of winning an important victory, and with the USA making noises about pulling out of the conflict, Syrian forces apparently launched a chemical strike which was not necessary militarily and which only served to encourage the USA to become more involved in the conflict. Assad may well be that stupid, but it does seem an odd strategy.

As for the UK’s response, though, it is worth bearing in mind that any claim that involvement is necessary on humanitarian grounds is mere spin. If humanitarian reasons drove the UK’s military actions, then we would be declaring war on Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of whom are carrying out murderous attacks on unarmed civilians. Of course, these two countries are our allies, so we turn a blind eye to what they are doing and, in the case of Saudi Arabia, actively assist them in their attacks on Yemen.

So, while there may well be justifications for declaring war on Syria, humanitarian concerns should not be considered high on that list where the UK is concerned. After all, the UK Government shows no concerns for the millions of its own citizens living in poverty, dying homeless because of Benefit sanctions, or depending on food banks to survive. Indeed, as has been pointed out by so many people, these things are part of an ideological choice on the part of the UK Government. The call for war provides further evidence that the need for Austerity is an invention, since the cost of a single air strike is sufficient to provide employment for several doctors, police officers or firefighters. The magic money tree always has enough branches to pay for military actions, yet rarely bears fruit when social issues are being discussed or even when ex-Service personnel need help once the armed forces have dispensed with their services.

It is not as if further military involvement is likely to solve the problem. If anything, all it will cause is another wave of Syrian refugees who will attempt to reach Europe. Of course, they might as well forget about coming to the UK in search of sanctuary because the UK Government, so concerned about humanitarian issues, won’t let them in.

What is happening in Syria is awful. A nation has been devastated, thousands of innocent lives have been lost, yet our only solution is to drop more bombs. Whatever the rights and wrongs, whatever you think of President Assad, escalating the war is not a solution. And if there genuinely is no other course of action, then justifying it on humanitarian grounds is hypocritical in the extreme. Regime change is what the West wants, but with Russia backing Assad, that seems unlikely to happen.

It is also worth mentioning that, of all the neighbouring countries, Syria is the only major oil producer in the vicinity. That, of course, must be pure coincidence.

Over the weekend, the UK media got quite worked up about the news that a new political party may be launched and that it has up to £50 million of funding. It will, according to the claims, be a new Centrist Party. This will presumably mean that it aims to tempt Blairite supporters from the Labour Party and the less extreme Tory MPs. It will presumably aim to replace the Lib Dems entirely since they have never really recovered from their Coalition with the Tories and their proven history of breaking promises and telling lies.

This new Party, we are assured, will break the mould of UK politics. That sounds very exciting, doesn’t it? Except that it’s just spin. This new Party, whatever name it adopts, does not want to break the mould, it wants to become part of the Westminster Establishment. It may give a veneer of choice to English voters, especially if it adopts an anti-Brexit agenda, but it will simply comprise the same neo-liberal people who are already part of the establishment. It is difficult to imagine that the £50 million came from grass roots activists, after all. More likely it came from wealthy individuals who want to protect their wealth from Brexit, and from corporate donors who see Brexit as a very real threat, or from the anti-Corbyn movement within Labour. Unable to oust Jeremy Corbyn and unwilling to formally admit that they are Tories in disguise, those behind this Party will simply attempt to become a new force within an existing structure. It is very unlikely that they will actually break much at all except perhaps Labour’s position as the Party of Opposition.

What this news does show is that there is a great deal of unrest even within Westminster about Brexit and the general tribalism of UK politics. There are clearly at least a couple of factions who want a slice of the action and feel frustrated at being locked out.

It is interesting to compare the tone of the reporting on this with the tone of comments about the Yes movement in Scotland. There has been a lot of debate, and sometimes squabbling, among Yessers on social media about when the next IndyRef should be called. This argument is, apparently, evidence of a split in the movement. This split was further emphasised by an article in the Sunday Herald which gave details of what it claims is the SNP’s latest view on which economic model an independent Scotland should adopt, with New Zealand apparently being the preferred option now. This, the paper claimed, would split the Yes movement.

So, an entirely new Party in Westminster is not a sign of a split in anything, but different opinions within the Yes movement are evidence of splits?

The fact is that the Yes movement is very broadly based. There are opinions on whether an independent Scotland should adopt a new currency or stick with sterling; on whether Scotland should remain a monarchy or become a republic, on whether we should remain in or re-join the EU or go with EFTA; on whether Scotland should be a member of NATO or not. There are, in fact, disagreements on just about everything. That’s because people with a wide variety of backgrounds, upbringings and experiences are all part of the Yes movement. It is not, as some have claimed, an unthinking cult. But, for all these disagreements, the one thing everyone is agreed upon is that Scotland should be a normal country making its own decisions for its own people. Independence is not an end in itself; it is the beginning of a new period in which all the various ideas and arguments will be debated and voted upon in order to decide the way ahead on a multitude of issues. We want to do this with a Parliament elected by a more proportionally representative system than Westminster’s farcical First Past The Post, and we want to be able to vote out any Government which does not run the country in the way we want. Rather than some new, millionaire-backed Centrist Party in Westminster, it is the Yes movement that seeks to truly break the mould of UK politics. In fact, we want to break away from it entirely. Yes, we will argue about specifics of what we need to do, but those disagreements are not splits within the movement because the entire movement knows that we need to become a normal country first.

Loads of people seem confused about what’s going on with the investigation into the Salisbury Novichok attack. In case you are one of those poor, deluded fools who don’t believe the UK Government’s official statements, here’s a summary of the investigation so far.

The nerve agent Novichok definitely comes from Russia except that nobody can actually prove that. But Russia must be to blame because they invented the stuff, just like the Chinese are to blame for all the mass shootings in America because they invented gunpowder.

This Novichok is the deadliest nerve agent known to man. It is absolutely lethal in every case except those where it isn’t.

The Novichok was given to the Skripal’s in their car, or in a pub, or in a restaurant, or in a park, or at the front door of their house. Nobody else in the pub, restaurant, park or at the front door was affected except one policeman.

The Skripal’s pet cat and guinea pigs (who may or may not have been hamsters) were taken away for testing but were also left inside the sealed house. The authorities could not say exactly where the pets were because of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. When the house was reopened, the pets were found to be dead. This means the cat and guinea pigs must have really belonged to a Mr Schrodinger.

Boris Johnson did not say that he had been told by Porton Down scientists that the Novichok definitely came from Russia. What he did say is that the scientists from Porton Down had definitely told him the Novichok came from Russia. The Foreign Office might accidentally have posted a Tweet saying the same thing, and accidentally not deleted it for several days, but you can’t prove that now because it’s been deleted. Unless you took a screen shot of it, in which case you are supporting Russia against the UK.

The UK Government’s evidence for Russia’s involvement must be overwhelming because a bucketload of other countries have expelled Russian diplomats after they heard it. We can’t tell you what that evidence is, but it’s definitely proof. Just like the proof we had of Iraq’s WMD’s.

I hope that clears it all up for you. Now stop thinking and go back to watching the Great British Bake Off while singing Rule Britannia and waving your Union Jack.

The news that scientists at Porton Down Chemical Research laboratories have been unable to confirm whether the nerve agent used in the Salisbury attack originated in Russia comes as no real surprise to anyone who has been following the debate. Some people are taking great delight in saying, “We told you so!", while others are becoming annoyed that it seems people are ignoring the track record of Russia when it comes to eliminating troublesome individuals. The whole matter is so shrouded in secrecy, rumour and speculation that it is well beyond the scope of this humble blog site to pontificate on who was behind the attack. Russia may well be the prime suspect, and certainly has the ability and the will to carry out such attacks if it deems them necessary, but enough doubt has been cast by the attitude and actions of the UK Government to aid the conspiracy theories.

Whoever was behind the attack, an important issue for most people in the UK is the fact that, once again, our Government has lied to us. Theresa May was very quick indeed to point the finger at Russia, and Boris Johnson went on television to assure the public that the Porton Down scientists had confirmed the nerve agent came from Russia. Those claims look just as pathetic, if rather more serious in their potential to cause international tension, than his Brexit lie which he put on the side of a bus.

What is puzzling is quite why so many European states leaped to ally themselves with Theresa May’s anti-Russian claims. Of course, many European states fear Russia, so maybe they didn’t need much encouragement, but it does seem a little premature unless there is other evidence which has not yet been made public.

But, in the absence of any such evidence, we are surely entitled to believe that Theresa May and Boris Johnson lied.

Some are claiming this could be the end of the Tory Government because such egregious mendacity must surely bring about a vote of No Confidence. Yet this is to ignore the fact that this Government and its immediate predecessors have consistently lied about a whole range of issues.

Perhaps it stems back to the IndyRef in Scotland, when better Together churned out so many lies it’s hard to keep track of them all. That was followed by the Brexit Referendum which included more lies and misleading statements. Some of these may have been down to ignorance, but some must surely have been deliberate. Either way, the UK Government has learned that it need not tell the truth because the voters in England will continue to support them. For all the calamity of the Brexit negotiations, for all the economic harm forecast, for all the businesses packing up and leaving, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour is still unable to overtake the Tories in the opinion polls. Of course, Labour is a very pro-Brexit Party, too, so maybe the voters in England reckon they’d rather have the Tories in charge of the train wreck than Labour. It’s not as if Jeremy Corbyn is averse to lying either, as evidenced by his many utterances when he visits Scotland to spout Unionist propaganda.

The big question is whether the voting public are aware that they are being lied to and, if they are, what they propose to do about it. One must feel sympathy for voters in England since their choice is very limited. Unless they all decide to vote Green in the upcoming local elections, Lib Dem is their only option if they want an anti-Brexit Party, and the Lib Dems are not exactly squeaky clean in the Telling the Truth Department.

Lying, it seems, is endemic within the Westminster system. Yes, circumstances may change, resulting in a politician’s promises not being kept, but, as evidenced by The Ferret’s recent article on Fact Checking, the majority of claims made by the Scottish Tories are false, and it’s easy to believe that the same applies to their Westminster counterparts.

Politicians lie to us because they know they can get away with it. Resignations are rarely called for, and the media usually tries to play down the importance of the lie or to distract with smears against Corbyn or the SNP. The system, in other words, is utterly, utterly broken. It’s about time Scotland woke up and realised it.

Many of us are extremely concerned by what is happening in Catalonia and by the associated attempts by the Spanish Government to have Catalan politicians arrested elsewhere in Europe. We are equally concerned by the lack of action on the part of the EU.

Whether these issues should persuade us to turn our backs on the EU as an organisation is another matter. It must be said that, if Spain were not already a member, its current acts of political repression would probably bar it from joining the EU. Whether the EU has the power or the political will to expel a member country is debatable. Given the problems the UK is experiencing in the Brexit negotiations, Spain may well feel that the EU cannot easily turf it out as a member. Equally, the EU probably reckons it has enough on its plate coping with Brexit, so doesn’t want to be dragged into a Spexit situation. There may well be other sanctions the EU can impose, and let’s hope they start to get their act together and let the Spanish Government know that what they are doing is unacceptable.

Part of the problem for the EU is that, as an organisation, its official stance is to do nothing to upset the status quo within any member state. This is why they refuse to make any official announcement on whether an independent Scotland would be welcomed as a member in its own right. For political reasons, the EU does not wish to be seen to be supporting the break up of one of its own member states. The big issue they face is when the democratic will of a nation within a state is repressed by violence and intimidation. Quite how the EU will resolve this is a thorny question and one which, at present, they seem to be answering by doing nothing.

There are, though, some points to take from all this. The first, as has been mentioned before on this blog, is that the EU’s apparent paralysis in the face of rising fascism in Spain shows that the Brexit claims of it being an all-powerful super-state are very far from the reality of the situation.

Secondly, some people on social media have been claiming that the EU’s stance on Catalonia shows that an independent Scotland would not be welcomed as a member since the EU is against separation. This claim is, however, based on a serious case of false equivalence.

The EU is silent on Catalonia just as it is silent on Scottish independence. Once Scotland becomes a normal country again, though, that situation is very different. The EU would then be faced with a membership request from a new nation which already meets all of its membership criteria except that of having several year’s’ financial and economic data as an independent nation. Not that details of that nature prevented East Germany being quickly brought into full membership status when it reunified with West Germany. Given an opportunity to accept a new member whose citizens are already EU citizens and which has huge resources in terms of oil, renewable energy, fish and other foodstuffs, plus the potential to develop industries which decades of Westminster control has decimated, it would be a perverse decision to refuse Scotland membership. And that’s not even considering the political point which would allow the EU to stick up two metaphorical fingers to Westminster by accepting Scotland as a member while allowing England to go its own way as an isolated nation.

The other argument presented by Unionists who, it must be remembered, used fear of being thrown out of the EU as a weapon in Project Fear back in 2014, is now to ask the question of why you would want to give back all the post-Brexit powers to Brussels.

This is disingenuous in the extreme. The choice we face is to have the most important of these powers seized by Westminster and used to erode Scotland’s food and drinks industries, to impose things like fracking, and to do away with Human Rights. By joining the EU, Scotland would certainly cede some over-arching control to the EU, but it would have a voice to represent our nation and vote on all matters concerning EU legislation. As just one example, an independent Scotland could negotiate better terms for our fishing industry under the CFP than Westminster ever has. The powers ceded to the EU would be as nothing compared to the control Westminster intends to impose on us no matter how much our elected representatives might protest.

So, let’s admit that the EU has some major flaws, but let’s not kid ourselves that it is primarily an interfering political entity which controls our laws. As events in Spain, Hungary and Poland have shown, the EU generally lets member states get on with their own way of governing. I wish they would do something to reign in Spain’s brutality towards the Catalans, but nobody can claim they are oppressing a member state by interfering in internal affairs.

And no, I haven’t forgotten about what happened to Greece, but that was as much to do with neo-liberal economic thinking and the power of the European Banks. I didn’t like that situation either, but it’s not comparable to what is happening in Spain and Catalonia which is about an altogether different set of issues.

Getting back to the issue of Scotland, being a part of a much larger trading group will be an enormous advantage. Look at how quickly Donald Trump exempted the EU from trade tariffs on steel and aluminium when the EU promised counter-measures. Look at things like mobile phone roaming charges, at freedom of movement, and all the other things we take for granted but which are causing such headaches for Brexit. From the threat of flights being grounded, of cancer treatment being affected, of research virtually shutting down, of businesses being affected, of prices increasing and food going to waste in the fields because not enough migrant workers are available, we should by now be appreciating just what an integral part of our lives the EU has become.

Yes, the EU has many faults, but an independent Scotland would still be better off as part of the group than stuck outside with no influence whatsoever. Nothing in life is perfect, but remaining part of the EU presents more opportunities than threats, and it certainly presents more opportunities than we face if we stick to the xenophobic and isolated UK.

And if, after all that, you still want to leave the EU, prudence would suggest that obtaining independence must be the first priority. We can stick with the EU for a few years to see how Scotland’s economy and society compares to that of The RUK outside the EU. If we decide that we, too, would be better off leaving, then at least it would be our decision, not one imposed on us by our larger neighbour.

This weekend Spain has issued European Arrest Warrants (EAW) for Catalan politicians Carles Puigdemont and Clara Ponsatí. This obliges the authority receiving the warrant to detain and extradite the named person to the issuing authority, in this case Spain. However it is possible that the extradition can be denied.

The EAW for Carles Puigdemont has been issued to Germany and he is now in custody there. The EAW for Clara Ponsatí has been issued to the UK as she is currently working at St Andrews university. Top Scots lawyer Aamer Anwar has been instructed to defend Clara Ponsatí.

I sincerely hope that Clara Ponsatí is not extradited from Scotland as this will be a travesty of justice as the EAW has been issued for clearly political reasons.

However it is important to note that Scottish politicians have no power to influence the judiciary in its decision. This is ironic as the Spanish judiciary is obviously not independent of their government.

There are several observations to make here. Firstly the Act of Parliament under which the decision to extradite or not will be made is an Act of the UK Parliament. Secondly it is important to note that a previous EAW was issued to Belgium in respect of Carles Puigdemont. After a judicial hearing he was released under the double criminality rule as the charge of rebellion was not an offence under Belgian law.

It is a natural reaction in this case to rail against the EU and ask why it is not doing more to counteract the overt injustice of the Spanish state. However it is proof that the EU is not an overarching super-state and that EU members are indeed still sovereign. Scotland, if it were to become an independent nation in the EU, would be able to formulate its own extradition law and ensure that people like Professor Ponsatí would not be extradited by an independent Scotland.

Those of us in Scotland who believe in independence should not lose sight of the fact that, whatever we think of the EU as an institution, Westminster remains the far bigger threat to Scotland’s prosperity and welfare.

We should await the result of Professor Ponsatí’s hearing. If the decision goes against her we, the people of Scotland, will have to do some serious thinking.

One of the few remaining arguments Project Fear has to counter the Indy movement is that of what they incorrectly term the question of trade within the UK single market. That’s as meaningless an expression as the German single market, but let’s put that aside and take a look at the choices which would face Scottish voters who decided to base their choice for or against independence solely on the question of trade.

To begin with, the argument for staying in the Union would result in trade continuing on an internal UK basis, with standards imposed by the UK. This would effectively mean that Scottish businesses could continue to buy and sell (they won’t technically be imports and exports within a unitary state) as they do at the moment within the UK. It would also give access to genuine import and export markets via the wonderful new trade deals the UK will do with the rest of the world. That’s provided you believe the claims of the Tory Government. But bear in mind that several countries have already told the UK they are not interested in doing deals unless they get favourable terms. Favourable for them, that is, not for the UK.

What this would cut off, though, is any chance of exporting to the EU if the UK’s standards of production were lower than those required by the EU. The way the Tories are talking, it’s a fairly safe bet that they will be.

So this scenario gives a reduced export market, dearer imports from the EU and possibly some opportunities for trade with other countries. Or possibly not. By the UK Government’s own admission, a post-Brexit Scotland within the UK would suffer an economic downturn on a massive scale. Still, at least you’d be able to put a Union flag brand on any goods you produce, so some people might think it is worth it.

The second scenario is that Scotland becomes independent and remains within the EU. This is the one Project fear will focus on because it will mean a hard border between Scotland and England. This prospect will no doubt terrify many voters, but we need to consider whether it has any upside.

For a start, trade will not stop altogether. The EU trades with plenty of countries around the world, and some EU nations even agree individual deals provided the third party nation conforms to EU standards. Cross border traffic will not cease although it may well become a significant hassle until proper smart border technology is put in place. There would very likely be tariffs imposed on goods going in both directions, and we should not forget that, if Scotland takes the sensible option of adopting its own currency, importers from England are likely to benefit as the value of the Scots pound increases, while those exporting to England may see a decline in demand. However, let’s not forget that demand for Scottish foodstuffs in particular is very strong in England. Provided their economy does not collapse too far, there is likely to be a continued demand for such things as whisky, beef and fish.

On the plus side, England would continue to trade with Scotland on the same terms as it agrees with the rest of the EU. Scotland would avoid the post-Brexit economic slump and would retain access to the rest of the EU markets plus any worldwide markets where the EU has been able to negotiate terms based on the third party nation having access to 28 EU nations.

So, border hassles would be an issue, but the upside makes this option considerably more favourable than the first one. Let’s not forget that the border would be constructed at England’s behest, not Scotland’s, and England would suffer just as much as Scotland would. As for the frequently implied threat that trade would virtually stop, this is nonsense because it suggests that England will trade with the rest of the EU but not with Scotland. The EU would simply not agree to that.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the UK’s capacity to actually impose a hard border has been brought into question as far as the Irish border question is concerned, and we have even had the UK’s Transport Minister, Chris Grayling, stating quite categorically on BBC Question Time that there are no circumstances under which the UK would impose a hard border to check lorries entering the UK via Dover. That seems a quite bizarre statement from someone supposedly representing a Government which wants to take back control of its borders, but he said it and we must suppose he meant it; always remembering that he is a Tory politician so his words cannot be fully trusted. But still, if there is to be no hard border in Ireland and no hard border on cross-Channel ports, why on earth should we believe that there would be a hard border between Scotland and England?

For the third option, let’s assume Scotland becomes independent and stays outside the EU. This is perhaps one that a not insignificant portion of the 2014 Yes vote would favour. It would allow us to do a trade deal with England, certainly, but it would mean also needing to do a deal with the EU. If we maintained higher production standards than those required in England, this would be perfectly possible, but whether a small nation like Scotland could get a good deal against 27 other countries is perhaps debatable. It might depend on how keen they are on whisky.

The important thing to remember in all of these is that trade will not stop. It is the terms of trade which will alter, and the ease with which goods can be imported and exported which will determine how our economy develops. Quite frankly, under the first option, that of remaining in a post-Brexit UK, our economy is not going to develop at all. The option of remaining in the EU as an independent country certainly presents some cross-border issues, but it does mean that we retain the ability to grow our economy and forge our own place in the world of international trade. The final option, of leaving the UK and the EU is very problematic in the short term. It would, I believe, be more sensible to stay in the EU until we see whether Brexit England is able to make a success of being outside the EU. If, in due course, we decide to quit the EU, then at least that would be our decision, not one which has been imposed on us by our neighbour.

It is also very important to remember that, while trade is an absolutely vital part of the equation, it is not the only one. Things like Human Rights and freedom of movement will also come into our decision. The thing is, the UK has no argument on matters like that since it wants to scrap or dilute them, so you won’t ever hear a Unionist mention them. All they’ve got is trade and, quite frankly, the way they are messing up their current negotiations, we should be very wary indeed of sticking with them.

One of the few remaining arguments Project Fear has to counter the Indy movement is that of what they incorrectly term the question of trade within the UK single market. That’s as meaningless an expression as the German single market, but let’s put that aside and take a look at the choices which would face Scottish voters who decided to base their choice for or against independence solely on the question of trade.

To begin with, the argument for staying in the Union would result in trade continuing on an internal UK basis, with standards imposed by the UK. This would effectively mean that Scottish businesses could continue to buy and sell (they won’t technically be imports and exports within a unitary state) as they do at the moment within the UK. It would also give access to genuine import and export markets via the wonderful new trade deals the UK will do with the rest of the world. That’s provided you believe the claims of the Tory Government. But bear in mind that several countries have already told the UK they are not interested in doing deals unless they get favourable terms. Favourable for them, that is, not for the UK.

What this would cut off, though, is any chance of exporting to the EU if the UK’s standards of production were lower than those required by the EU. The way the Tories are talking, it’s a fairly safe bet that they will be.

So this scenario gives a reduced export market, dearer imports from the EU and possibly some opportunities for trade with other countries. Or possibly not. By the UK Government’s own admission, a post-Brexit Scotland within the UK would suffer an economic downturn on a massive scale. Still, at least you’d be able to put a Union flag brand on any goods you produce, so some people might think it is worth it.

The second scenario is that Scotland becomes independent and remains within the EU. This is the one Project fear will focus on because it will mean a hard border between Scotland and England. This prospect will no doubt terrify many voters, but we need to consider whether it has any upside.

For a start, trade will not stop altogether. The EU trades with plenty of countries around the world, and some EU nations even agree individual deals provided the third party nation conforms to EU standards. Cross border traffic will not cease although it may well become a significant hassle until proper smart border technology is put in place. There would very likely be tariffs imposed on goods going in both directions, and we should not forget that, if Scotland takes the sensible option of adopting its own currency, importers from England are likely to benefit as the value of the Scots pound increases, while those exporting to England may see a decline in demand. However, let’s not forget that demand for Scottish foodstuffs in particular is very strong in England. Provided their economy does not collapse too far, there is likely to be a continued demand for such things as whisky, beef and fish.

On the plus side, England would continue to trade with Scotland on the same terms as it agrees with the rest of the EU. Scotland would avoid the post-Brexit economic slump and would retain access to the rest of the EU markets plus any worldwide markets where the EU has been able to negotiate terms based on the third party nation having access to 28 EU nations.

So, border hassles would be an issue, but the upside makes this option considerably more favourable than the first one. Let’s not forget that the border would be constructed at England’s behest, not Scotland’s, and England would suffer just as much as Scotland would. As for the frequently implied threat that trade would virtually stop, this is nonsense because it suggests that England will trade with the rest of the EU but not with Scotland. The EU would simply not agree to that.

It is also worth bearing in mind that the UK’s capacity to actually impose a hard border has been brought into question as far as the Irish border question is concerned, and we have even had the UK’s Transport Minister, Chris Grayling, stating quite categorically on BBC Question Time that there are no circumstances under which the UK would impose a hard border to check lorries entering the UK via Dover. That seems a quite bizarre statement from someone supposedly representing a Government which wants to take back control of its borders, but he said it and we must suppose he meant it; always remembering that he is a Tory politician so his words cannot be fully trusted. But still, if there is to be no hard border in Ireland and no hard border on cross-Channel ports, why on earth should we believe that there would be a hard border between Scotland and England?

For the third option, let’s assume Scotland becomes independent and stays outside the EU. This is perhaps one that a not insignificant portion of the 2014 Yes vote would favour. It would allow us to do a trade deal with England, certainly, but it would mean also needing to do a deal with the EU. If we maintained higher production standards than those required in England, this would be perfectly possible, but whether a small nation like Scotland could get a good deal against 27 other countries is perhaps debatable. It might depend on how keen they are on whisky.

The important thing to remember in all of these is that trade will not stop. It is the terms of trade which will alter, and the ease with which goods can be imported and exported which will determine how our economy develops. Quite frankly, under the first option, that of remaining in a post-Brexit UK, our economy is not going to develop at all. The option of remaining in the EU as an independent country certainly presents some cross-border issues, but it does mean that we retain the ability to grow our economy and forge our own place in the world of international trade. The final option, of leaving the UK and the EU is very problematic in the short term. It would, I believe, be more sensible to stay in the EU until we see whether Brexit England is able to make a success of being outside the EU. If, in due course, we decide to quit the EU, then at least that would be our decision, not one which has been imposed on us by our neighbour.

It is also very important to remember that, while trade is an absolutely vital part of the equation, it is not the only one. Things like Human Rights and freedom of movement will also come into our decision. The thing is, the UK has no argument on matters like that since it wants to scrap or dilute them, so you won’t ever hear a Unionist mention them. All they’ve got is trade and, quite frankly, the way they are messing up their current negotiations, we should be very wary indeed of sticking with them.

Like most people, I have absolutely no idea who was behind the attempted murder of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. However, what this saga reveals is that a great many people are perfectly willing to believe that the UK Government is not telling the truth.

It must be said that there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to back the conspiracy theory and, when allied to the Westminster penchant for lying to UK citizens, it is perhaps no wonder that a great many people are casting doubts on the official claims.

This situation is not helped by the fact that, so far, the UK Government has refused to produce any evidence to back up its assertion that Russia was behind the attempted murder. Russia’s reputation for carrying out such acts is, if anything, even worse than the UK’s – certainly in recent times – so we cannot discount the possibility that, however unlikely it might seem that Vladimir Putin might sanction a bungling attempt to do away with someone he had already dismissed from Russia as of little current importance, he may have authorised the assassination attempt.

I never thought I’d say this but, for once, I am in agreement with Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn. We really ought to see the evidence before making accusations. Trump may well be in Putin’s pocket, but the UK Government’s unwillingness to produce any definitive proof certainly gives him the wriggle room to avoid becoming involved.

I should also say that I am rather disappointed that the SNP have given what seems unconditional backing to the official UK response without asking to see any evidence to back the claims. I think a more tempered approach would have been appropriate.

But whether the murder bid was carried out by Russia or whether it was a false flag operation to distract the British public from the constitutional crisis which is about to engulf us, Theresa May has certainly seized upon it as the ideal story to make that very distraction.

But what, in reality, is she going to do? She has expelled some diplomats and said no member of the Royal family will be going to the World Cup. I bet Vladimir Putin isn’t losing much sleep over either of those. We may see some economic sanctions but, without backing from other major states, these will be largely ineffective. And it’s worth noting that the UK has recently gone out of its way to alienate its European allies thanks to Brexit. With the USA clearly not prepared to back them, Westminster will quickly find out just how big a global player the UK is. The end result will probably be that even more UK citizens will see evidence of just how inept the UK Government is. What we will probably see is a lot of bluster, a lot of empty threats, and a promise to establish an enquiry to get to the bottom of several sudden and unexpected deaths of people living in the UK who had fallen foul of Vladimir Putin. Like all enquiries, it’s purpose will be to obfuscate and delay so that everyone eventually forgets about it. That’s the British way. See Grenfell enquiry.

The thing is that Putin has the UK exactly where he wants it. Cut off from Europe, abandoned by the USA, the UK is becoming an irrelevance. It will suit Russia for the UK to become a tax haven since it will allow them to launder even more of their money through the few remaining London banks. The Tories already receive some very healthy donations from Russian individuals; money which they have no intention of returning, so it is in their interests not to prod the Russian bear too much.

We can argue all we like about whether the Skripal murder attempt was a bungled false flag operation carried out by the British Secret Service, a bungled attempt by the Russian FSB who are so emboldened by the UK’s ineptitude that they didn’t care whether they were discovered, or whether it was some third party who wanted Mr Skripal dead for their own reasons. The main conclusions we can draw from this sorry saga is that trust in the UK Government is at an all time low, and that Russia really does not care what the UK does because it is now a toothless tiger on the world stage.

There is a lot going on just now, and it’s difficult to keep up with the details of what are very complex situations. The major story in the UK media, if you discount the inane coverage of various members of the Royal family, is the attempted murder of a former Russian spy and his daughter. The Russians are being blamed by the British Government, while conspiracy theorists are claiming it is a false flag operation intended to distract the British public from the constitutional crisis which is about to engulf us. I don’t intend to comment on the Russian story at the moment since much of what is being said on both sides of the argument is based mostly on speculation.

Whether the UK Government would go to such extreme lengths to create a distraction is a debatable point, but distraction is certainly a technique they are fond of using, and there is another story which serves as an example of this.

The Tories in Scotland have been shouting about the fact that British Army troops based in Scotland will be paying more tax than soldiers based elsewhere. This claim has been picked up by the BBC and has even resulted in a Westminster promise to launch an official enquiry.

The claim is, of course, nonsense. Investigations by The Ferret have already shown that the majority of soldiers based in Scotland will actually be better off.

But that is not the point as far as the Tories are concerned. The point is to spread the propaganda, to have the BBC reinforce the message and to get people who do not use the internet for their news to believe another SNPBad story. If and when the official investigation concludes that the story is nonsense, you can be pretty sure that it will not be reported by the BBC, but having the investigation is not really the point. The damage has already been done because the message is out there.

If you’ve ever wondered why broadcasting is not devolved, this is why.

Britain is a concept which seems to get a lot of people riled up these days. The word means different things to different people, with everyone insisting their interpretation is correct. In fact, it seems the term has had a number of meanings from almost its earliest known times.

The word itself comes from a long time ago, when a Greek explorer named Pytheas reached the northern coast of what is now France at some time in the 4th Century BCE. He looked across the channel and saw the white cliffs of an island, so he asked the locals which people lived there. They told him that he was looking at the lands of the Pritani (or Pretani, Pritanni, Pretanni).

Pytheas voyaged to the British Isles, then went onwards to Scandinavia, but the name he had heard from the locals and which he recorded, clearly stuck.

The Romans converted the name into Britannia, which was the name they gave to their province. Confusingly, while the Romans sometimes divided the island into Britannia to the south and Caledonia to the north, this generally happened after the construction of Hadrian’s Wall. Even then, they also used the term Britannia to describe the whole of what we now term great Britain, i.e. the main landmass which includes present-day England, Wales and Scotland. This may have been because the Romans viewed the entire land as being theirs by right, or simply because it was a convenient name for a faraway place which offered little of value and required an excessive number of troops to keep under control.

Confusion over the use of the term continues to this day. What do people mean when they say “Britain"? It really depends on what they think it means. Recently, I’ve seen claims that Britain means Wales and England, while Great Britain includes Scotland. That seems to hark back to the official Roman division but, as mentioned above, it wasn’t a hard and fast rule even among the Romans. It’s also worth pointing out that, in the 10th Century, Irish annals use the word “Britain" when they are referring only to Wales, because that was where the Britons lived. The English were not viewed as Britons so, from the Irish perspective, could not be said to be living in Britain. Here we see evidence that names used to indicate territory controlled by a certain tribe or national group rather than being a strictly geographic term which applied to land no matter who lived on it, which is the sense most people use today.

For most of the Middle Ages, Britain was generally used as a geographical term to describe the islands, with England and Scotland regarded, correctly, as distinct nations.

Of course, it was the Union of the crowns in1603 which required a new term to describe the subjects of James VI & I, so Britain was resurrected, apparently much to the disgust of the English nobles who felt English first and British very much second. How things have changed.

So we return to the less than elegant situation where being British means different things to different people, and Britain can be either a geographic location or a political entity. It could be argued that saying, “I’m British" could be viewed as being similar to “I’m European", in that it simply describes where you are from or which culture you identify with. Or it could be that you are stating your self-identification with a political entity. The terms Britain, great Britain, United Kingdom (and, as so many Scots, Welsh and Irish people are fond of pointing out) England as virtual synonyms has simply added to the confusion. Some argue that this is a deliberate policy on the part of the ruling elite who wish everyone under British rule to conform to some idealised version of a Briton. Yet, when you ask what it is that makes people British, the explanations they come up with are very often general traits such as “Fair play" or “a sense of justice", which, in reality, cannot be ascribed to natives of Great Britain alone. Travel anywhere in the world and you will find people who practise what are often claimed to be British values, just as you can find many British citizens who display some very unpleasant behaviour patterns which do not conform to those same British Values.

So Britain and being British can mean a lot of things. Languages, words and phrases shift meaning over time, and some words have more than one meaning. Britain is certainly one of those multi-meaning words and has been for a very long time. However, the highly-charged political and constitutional situation in the UK may be having a considerable effect on its meaning because, whatever the pedants among us may wish, it is increasingly being used in a political sense. Britain is coming to mean the UK, specifically the system of Westminster Government, and being British increasingly means that you identify with that system. Linguistically speaking, this transition is fascinating to watch. Who knows what being British will mean to the next generation who inhabit the British Isles?

There is much debate amongst the Yes community about when IndyRef2 should be called, but the news that EU residents may be forbidden from voting if we wait until after March, 2019 has put an end stop date to the speculation. While most of these people voted No last time around because of the scare stories they were fed, it seems likely they will switch to Yes because of Brexit. To have them excluded even if they have continued to live here and work here would not only remove a significant portion of the potential Yes vote, it is shockingly undemocratic, even if it is in keeping with the way the UK treats non-UK nationals.

So, if we need to vote before March, 2019, when should the IndyRef be called?

The big problem here is the ongoing debacle of the so-called Brexit negotiations which largely consist of UK politicians making speeches about how they are going to get a deal which cherry-picks the bits they like from the current membership benefits, and then the EU saying, once again, that cherry-picking will not be allowed.

As long as this futile fiasco continues, the Scottish Government would be foolish to call for IndyRef2. Putting aside for the moment the two very important issues of whether the UK Government would graciously allow us permission to decide our own future, and whether we have any chance of winning in the face of the barrage of scare stories and media propaganda we will inevitably face, the fact remains that to call IndyRef2 before we know for certain what fate awaits us with Brexit would be a mistake. It may seem very unlikely, but someone in Westminster may yet see sense and the whole thing could be called off; or Theresa May might call Nicola Sturgeon’s bluff and concede all the things the Scottish Government has called for; or the Irish Border question might be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction; or the Gibraltar border question might go away. OK, unicorns might suddenly appear, and pigs might fly, but Brexit is so unpredictable , and May’s leadership position so shaky, that anything could happen.

It increasingly looks as if there will be a fairly narrow window during which IndyRef2 can be called. Sooner or later, the Scottish people are going to have to be told that Brexit is taking us nowhere and we need to make up our minds what sort of country we want to live in. If we wait until the UK has left the EU, the media will have had more time to persuade people that things aren’t really so bad. We have seen the normalisation of xenophobia and acceptance that the NHS will be privatised. We cannot afford for these things to become the norm in Scotland, so we need to have that vote before it is too late.

And who knows? Perhaps a short campaign will do the trick this time. If the SNP and greens have been planning their campaign properly, we may yet be able to demonstrate that for all its uncertainties, becoming a normal country again would be far better for all of us than sticking with the increasingly unstable and deranged UK. But if by some miracle Brexit does go away, the prime reason for calling IndyRef2 in the short term will go with it. It won’t remove the underlying case for Indy, but it will be enough to persuade some voters that it isn’t worth the hassle. For that reason, disappointing as it is to many of us, IndyRef2 needs to stay on hold for the moment. However, with the Brexit deadline looming, it won’t be long before the Scottish Government is left with no choice but to go for it.

As someone who remembers John Major as Prime Minister, I must admit I always thought he was quite a caring and sincere man. This impression was probably helped by the fact that he followed Margaret thatcher, so he had a pretty low bar to hurdle. He certainly wasn’t an inspiring leader, as subsequent Tory in-fighting revealed.

Having said that, his speech yesterday was one of the better ones on Brexit and contained a lot of good sense. However, we need to differentiate between admiring what he said and admiring him as an individual. I certainly agree with his comments on Brexit, but he is still a British Nationalist who was part of the Westminster bubble and whose views on Scottish independence mean he remains very much part of the establishment.

However, it must be said that his speech confirmed one thing most of us already knew; that the current crop of Tory politicians who are running the UK are of a very much lower calibre than those of Major’s generation. Whether you agree with his politics or not, Major showed the likes of Boris Johnson and Theresa May how a politician should conduct themselves.

Not that it will make any difference. The Tories we have in power are a clueless bunch who are so steeped in British nationalism that they are unable to comprehend why they are not getting their own way in the Brexit talks.

And now, after Theresa May agreed to find a solution on the Irish Border back in December, she has been faced with the consequences of that agreement because the aims of the Brexiteers are totally at odds with the avowed intention to keep an open Border. It simply cannot be done. With the UK Government waffling on and insisting it will be able to cherry pick parts of the current membership arrangements despite the EU consistently saying no such deal will be agreed to, the EU have now drawn up a detailed document outlining the consequences of the December agreement.

And what is the response to this very obvious step?

Theresa May says it is unacceptable despite the fact that she tacitly accepted it in December, and David Davis says the UK will withhold any payment to the EU unless it backs down. He may think this is playing hardball, but it’s not; it’s simply showing the EU he has a hard head out of which it is impossible to get any sense.

The issues over the Irish and Gibraltar Borders have always been incompatible with the dreams of the Brexiteers. Whether the Tories wake up and acknowledge this remains to be seen. Quite frankly, I doubt it. May’s next speech will probably simply be a re-hashed version of the “We will get a bespoke deal" fanciful nonsense we’ve heard before. But it cannot continue like that. Pretty soon, something is going to give. When it does, let’s hope the Scottish Government is ready to launch the lifeboats.

this really shouldn’t need saying, but it seems the UK Government and their pro-Brexit media allies are incapable of understanding.

Right from the start of the Brexit negotiations, the EU has consistently said that there can be no cherry-picking of certain aspects of membership in the deal for the UK to leave the EU. Despite this, every time a Government Minister or the PM makes a statement on what sort of deal the UK is going to demand from the EU, it involves cherry-picking of some aspects of the current membership arrangements.

how many times do they need to be told. Even the most inept and hapless negotiators cannot have failed to grasp this basic concept. One is drawn to the inevitable conclusion that, with little more than a year to go, the UK Government is intent on forcing a hard Brexit and blaming the EU for its intransigence.

Blaming others for one’s failures is a fairly common human trait, but the UK Government is taking it to new levels. The Irish are to blame because of their indignation over the way the Good Friday Agreement is likely to be trampled, the Scots are to blame because they don’t want a UK power grab of responsibilities which are already devolved but which the UK Government wants to reserve to itself so that it can impose its own rules, and people who raise perfectly sensible objections to the idiotic pronouncements from both Tory and Labour MPs about Customs Unions and tariffs are blamed for not backing a Brexit that works for everyone.

A Brexit that works for everyone? That is pure fantasy. The only people it will work for are the already mega-wealthy tax avoiders who want to turn the UK into a tax haven. The Government’s own analyses demonstrate this, yet they are determined to blunder on with less hap and less eptness than anyone can ever recall from a UK Government.

If this situation weren’t so desperately serious, it would be funny. Even the scriptwriters for Yes, prime Minister would have struggled to come up with this level of bumbling incompetence.

It really must be just about time that Scotland began to man the lifeboats. Independence will bring its own uncertainties, but they surely cannot be any worse than the certainty of Brexit being a disaster for the majority of British citizens.

So the Blazers at the SFA have got their fingers out at last and appointed a new manager for the Scotland football team. Alex McLeish wouldn’t have been my first choice, and the way the SFA have handled the whole affair has been a complete joke, but I’m not going to let that stop me supporting the team and hoping McLeish does well in the job.

Let’s face it, he was the best qualified of the available candidates who were mentioned in the media, and the appointment is understandable if you’re looking for a safe, unambitious appointment. The way Scotland have consistently failed to qualify for major championships means we either needed to be very bold or very safe, and the SFA have gone for safe. Fair enough although they could have gone about it in a much better way than the circus we’ve witnessed over the past few months.

As for McLeish, a lot of fans aren’t happy. What I don’t agree with are some of the reasons for condemning his appointment. OK, you could argue on footballing grounds that Steve Clarke would make a much better international manager, but he’s already in a job. He would have been my first choice but hopefully he will get a chance at some point in the future.

Another reason for people’s dislike of McLeish is that he walked out on Scotland once before, so why should we give him another chance? That’s a fair point but it’s a fans’ view. Fans are usually very loyal to their team, but footballers and managers need to earn a living, so loyalty doesn’t really enter into it. I mean, let’s face it – if someone offered you double, triple or quadruple your salary to move jobs, you’d be daft not to take it. Alex McLeish has, throughout his career, followed the money. He’s now at the stage where he’s not likely to get such offers again unless he makes a huge success of the Scotland job. If he does, and if someone waves a cheque book at him, he’ll be off like a shot. That’s got to be a concern but it hasn’t happened yet and the whole point is that it depends on him making Scotland a successful team.

The other reason people are giving for being unhappy with his appointment is that he urged people to vote No in the IndieRef. I disagree with him about that, but I disagree with about half the population of Scotland about that and, quite honestly, it really shouldn’t matter. What’s at issue here is his ability as a football manager, not his politics. And there’s no doubt he has considerable experience as both player and manager and has been pretty successful in most jobs he’s had as a manager. I really don’t see what difference his political views make, although I must admit I laughed at a comment I saw online about Scotland appointing a manager who thinks his country shouldn’t be a country.

In the end, though, I don’t care about McLeish’s politics. What I care about is the Scotland football team. Whatever he thinks about our political future, I’m hoping he can inspire the exciting crop of young talent he has at his disposal and gets us qualified for a major championship. I’ll back him all the way on that mission. I will worry about him walking out on us again but I need to believe he can improve the team’s fortunes. With some great young players starting to make an impact at high levels, there’s no reason why McLeish can’t help Scotland rise up and be a footballing nation again.

The Oxfam scandal is certainly attracting a great many headlines, and rightly so. It is perhaps naïve of many of us not to have considered that some people would have been attracted to working for such a charity because they knew it would present them with opportunities to go to parts of the world where they were sure to find vulnerable children who could be exploited.

Oxfam, and similar charities, have a duty of care to try to ensure that no such person is allowed to work for them, but let’s face it, many paedophiles are very successful at concealing their true nature from others. However, if anyone is discovered to be a paedophile, or even if there are suggestions that they might be, the charities should ensure that such people face full and proper investigation and face the full penalties the law provides. This is where Oxfam went seriously wrong.

As a result of their attempt to cover up the scandal, Oxfam are in the news, but some media outlets are going completely overboard with their coverage, causing many people to wonder whether there is more to this story than meets the eye.

the cynics amongst us are already pointing out that this story, which relates to events which allegedly took place several years ago, has broken at a very convenient time. It is not long ago, after all, that Oxfam openly criticised the Tory Government for its cruel treatment of the poor and disabled. Some are suggesting that much of the current furore is down to the Government getting its own back.

Not only that, the story coincides with calls by Jacob Rees Mogg to cut the overseas aid budget. Having Oxfam in the spotlight does his cause no harm at all.

Coincidence? Maybe, but there is also news breaking on social media that much of the publicity surrounding Mr Rees Mogg is being generated by Kremlin-controlled Twitter accounts and Bots which generate a sufficient number of comments to make the mainstream media pick up on them, thus creating a publicity story which is intended to manipulate the ever-gullible public.

coincidence? You decide.

And, of course, the other point many are making is that this same Government which is now making noises about cutting grants to charities has consistently lost files which allege paedophilia being carried out by members of Parliament.

Coincidence? Some are arguing that is more like deflection, not to mention hypocrisy.

But the main problem with this whole story is that it rarely seems to focus on the children who suffered at the hands of these unsavoury individuals. Their lives were blighted enough by the natural disasters which devastated their country, and instead of help, they found only cruel victimisation. In today’s UK, it seems such things are of secondary importance as far as the media are concerned. All the public outrage is being directed towards Oxfam who, it must be remembered, employ many hundreds of people, most of whom genuinely work hard to help those who are less fortunate. But I have yet to hear a single news commentary talk about the children.

Even when the children are mentioned, the media distort their behaviour. Many newspaper headlines don’t seem to understand that the children were not “exchanging sex for gifts"; they were being exploited by ruthless, manipulative individuals who were taking advantage of their vulnerability. That is the real tragedy, with the secondary tragedy being that the British media seem unable to grasp this point.

Godwin’s Law asserts that, the longer an online discussion continues, the more likely someone is to make reference to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis in relation to the views of their protagonists. However, awareness of this law does tend to make many people reluctant to resort to this tactic. This is because it is often viewed as a lazy rhetorical device and suggests that the person making the comparison has run out of arguments.

But somebody needs to draw some comparisons when viewing the current trends in British politics. Ever since WW2 ended, people in Britain have wondered how on earth a creature like Adolf Hitler could rise to power in Germany in the 1930s. To which the response must be, “Take a look around you."

Now, I’m not saying any of our current political leaders are Nazis, even though at least one MP allegedly has a security guard who likes to dress up in Nazi uniform. That, however, could be an image taken out of context, or it could be a Photoshop job, so let’s not get carried away.

But we cannot deny the similarities simply because accusing anyone of being a Nazi is a very unpleasant thing to do. Those who support Scottish independence should know that well enough since we have often been accused of being Nazis. This naturally makes us reluctant to make the same accusation.

But we should not forget that Fascism comes in many guises. Hitler’s version of it was the worst seen in Europe, but it was not the only version. Mussolini was the first to embrace Fascism and was actually regarded as the leading European Fascist at one stage.

The problem with Fascism is that, although we can generally recognise it, it is notoriously difficult to define. But there are general features we can associate with this belief system. Fascism tends to be extremely nationalistic, xenophobic and militaristic. It employs intimidation, promotes the use of “othering" to inflame hatred of minority groups, and is very keen on shutting down any dissent.

Of course, the same can be said for extreme versions of Communism, since extremists of all sorts tend to display similar tendencies, but there is no doubt that we are seeing many of these things in the UK today, and that they are allied to the views of Right Wing politicians.

It is scary, although few people seem concerned. The media are doing their best to normalise Right Wing political views and to promote those who espouse those views. Brexit is steaming ahead even though there is growing evidence that a majority of the public now oppose it. We are seeing violent scuffles at political speaking events, threats from Government to crack down on what it sees as abuse even though existing laws can easily serve to prosecute people who issue threats or act in an intimidating or violent manner.

In more mainstream politics, we have seen the UK Government pay lip service to Devolution but ignore it in practice when pushing through its Repeal Bill. We have seen statements of intent to involve the devolved Parliaments in discussion, and then witnessed the UK Government completely ignore the Scottish and Welsh Governments. When challenged, they either refuse to answer or issue bland apologies, excuses and warning threats. All of this is backed by a media who constantly tell us how things are going wrong in Scotland and that only the UK can put things right. We are bombarded with messages telling us that it is the uncertainty of another IndyRef which is causing all the problems, but that Brexit is a great opportunity. It’s as if Orwell’s Ministry of Truth were in charge.

So, to be clear, I’m not accusing anyone in UK politics of being a Nazi, but I am saying that far too many of them, backed by the media, are displaying Fascist attitudes. And each time they get away with saying or doing something outrageous, it only inspires them towards taking the next step.

Disabled people are dying, the homeless are dying, child poverty is on the increase, life expectancy is falling, the NHS in England is in danger of imploding, people who have spent their entire lives in the UK are being deported on the flimsiest of excuses, the UK is selling billions of pounds of armaments to stoke wars in the Middle East, and Union Flags proliferate in every walk of life.

What can we do to prevent this becoming even worse? In truth, not a great deal. We have seen in the past week or so that even massive demonstrations are not reported by the State broadcaster in order to keep the majority of the public ignorant of what is going on. Demonstrations are great as a way of expressing opinion, but they won’t stop the politicians. The only thing that will stop them is voting them out. The problem there is that it may already be too late, since Brexit will have become a reality before another UK General Election is held. And we know that English voters tend to vote Tory no matter what happens as a consequence. With the wealth and power of the media and the rich elite behind them, the Tories are able to influence public opinion by playing on people’s fears and blaming foreigners for all the ills people see around them.

Scotland may yet have a chance to escape this madness. But, if we do, we need to make absolutely sure that we take advantage by using our votes wisely, because we’ll only get one chance.

This week has seen the marking of the 100th anniversary of some women being given the vote. This was, of course, a momentous occasion but a word of caution is required when celebrating such things.

To begin with, it must be acknowledged that the Suffragette movement was absolutely vital in bringing about this change. Suffragettes underwent horrendous intimidation and were regarded as enemies of the State for a long time. They ran the risk of being verbally abused or even physically assaulted by members of the public who were whipped into fury by the media of the day. In addition, imprisonment and forced feeding were the fate of many.

This shows that the British State has always seen any attempt to dilute its power and authority as a threat. Extending the franchise away from wealthy males was perceived as dangerous. It did eventually happen, of course, but the Suffragettes showed us that the British State will never willingly concede any power unless it has little option. It also confirmed that the media will always be on the side of the status quo and will be able to influence many members of the public with its constant messages of othering.

Extension of the franchise is an ongoing, gradual process. For example, while it is right that some women being able to vote should be commemorated, we should not forget that many of the young men who fought and died in the trenches during World War 1 were considered too young to vote.

During the Twentieth Century, the franchise was eventually extended further until we reached the stage where men and women aged 18 or over have equal voting rights. This is as it should be, but we should not fool ourselves that this is the end of the process.

In Scotland, young people are now permitted to vote from the age of 16, while the UK Government stubbornly insists that people under the age of 18 are not mature enough to vote responsibly. This is the next stage in the process, because it is quite unconscionable that people who are considered old enough to leave school, find work and pay taxes, to marry and even to join the armed Forces and perhaps give their lives for the State, are not permitted to vote in elections. The excuse that they are not mature enough is quite pathetic. Anyone who has visited a school knows that many young people are perfectly capable of listening to arguments and making up their own minds. Indeed, they are often better informed than elderly people who have been exposed to State propaganda all their lives and still trust the mainstream media.

So, yes, let’s celebrate a momentous event from 100 years ago, but let us also remember that it was only one step, albeit a very large and important one, on the long road to democracy.

News has leaked out that Margaret Thatcher was opposed to German Reunification. She wasn’t alone in this, but she apparently spoke to Mikhail Gorbachev about it and told him to ignore any public announcements from the West about wanting a unified Germany because official policy was the exact opposite.

Now, it’s no real surprise that any politician, especially one like Margaret Thatcher, would be prepared to say one thing in public and the exact opposite in private, but her reasons for this particular bit of hypocrisy reveal quite a lot about the British Nationalist mentality which is seeing such a revival at the moment.

Going all the way back to the days of Henry VIII, England’s foreign policy as regards Europe has always been to try to keep the continent divided so that no one nation wielded too much power. Through the centuries, this is what has driven England’s and then the UK’s involvement in many wars and in financing other countries to engage in warfare so as to prevent any nation becoming too strong. This mindset seems to have influenced Mrs Thatcher in her views on Germany since the sole reason for not wanting a united Germany is fear that it would increase the strength of that country.

This fear, as with so much in BritNat thinking, is based on glorified memories of the two World Wars fought last century, and a dread that Germany might harbour future dreams of military conquest.

What this thinking ignores is that Germany is one of the few countries to have learned the lessons of these profound and catastrophic events. A united Germany may well harbour ambitions of domination, but those ambitions are more economic than military. And we have seen that Germany has accepted more refugees from Africa and the Middle east than most other nations, while maintaining a political system which is intended to prevent any one faction gaining too much control. Contrast that with the UK’s paltry response to the refugee crisis and it’s grossly unfair First Past The Post, Two-Party system. The UK’s political system is so undemocratic that we may soon end up with a Prime Minister who is even more Right Wing than Theresa May. That ought to scare everyone, especially as only Tory Party members will have voted for whoever replaces May in a leadership contest. That’s not democracy.

The fact is that Germany has learned to look to the future, while the UK is mired in dreams of past glory and a refusal to update its antiquated systems. Even in such a simple thing as electronic voting in the House of Commons, the UK cannot bring itself to throw off its attachment to ancient tradition, resulting in hours of wasted time as MPs shuffle through the lobbies to register their votes. It is no wonder the UK is becoming a laughing stock.

Another manifestation of this obsession with the past is the UK’s attitude towards Germany. The famous “Don’t mention the war!" sketch from Fawlty Towers was intended to parody this obsession yet is often viewed as somehow reinforcing the UK’s right to view Germany as a perpetual threat to peace. Yet Germany is not selling billions of pounds worth of munitions to Saudi Arabia, nor does it maintain a ludicrously expensive nuclear arsenal, nor is it building aircraft carriers so that it can threaten and bully other countries (if it ever manages to afford to buy any aircraft to go on the carriers).

Recent headlines in the Telegraph about Britain’s “Glorious Victory" in WW2 only serve to confirm that many British Nationalists continue to live in the past. It is those dreams of glory which have resulted in the rise of xenophobia and the madness of Brexit. The EU, which we all recognise is far from perfect, has been cast in the role of villain, but the UK has been unable to employ its usual tactic of divide and conquer because, for all their differences, most EU member nations understand the benefits the EU provides and want to remain a part of it. With its influence nullified because every member nation is afforded votes within the EU, the UK has well and truly taken the huff and is proceeding with what a growing number of people realise is a potentially catastrophic course of action. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

All the revelations about Mrs Thatcher’s views on Germany show is that fear of A strong Europe drives too many political decisions within the UK. We are experiencing the most obvious manifestation of that fear right now. Sadly, given that this view has prevailed in Westminster for centuries, there is probably no cure. All Scotland can do is put the patient in isolation by breaking away and joining the European countries as a normal nation in its own right.

I have a friend who has been quite severely disabled since birth. His problem has left him with limbs which are slightly twisted and very unreliable. He has trouble walking and certainly can’t manage any speed greater than a determined plod. His hands have trouble holding things and I know he was always given extra time to complete exams at school because he took so long to write anything.

Despite these problems, he’s a very clever and witty man, and he’s never let his physical difficulties stop him getting around. He used to accompany our group of pals on such diverse things as pub crawls and gentle hill walks, and he never, ever complained although once or twice he did turn back if the going underfoot became too rough.

After school, he went to university, qualified as a lawyer and has held down a job for many years. Now that he’s approaching retirement, he’s finding things becoming even tougher since, with the aging process, his limbs are even less reliable than they used to be when he was younger. He manages without a wheelchair, but needs a walking stick and preferably someone to hang onto when walking. Nowadays he can’t walk very far at all. Like many disabled people, though, he is able to laugh at himself and has always kept his sense of humour.

Recently, though, he had to undergo a PIP assessment because he was due to be transferred out of the old Disability Living Allowance scheme. I was a bit worried for him because he is able to do a lot of things which I thought might disqualify him from earning PIP points. Fortunately, he has been granted PIP, but his comments about the process were quite revealing.

He told me, “It’s quite depressing to have to go into a room and justify just what a pathetic and inadequate human being you are."

Which sums up the PIP concept perfectly. Rather than a system which is designed to assist disabled people cope with the inevitable extra costs their disability incurs so that they can participate more readily in society, it seems designed to degrade people and make them feel worthless. Rather than allowing disabled people to cope with finding a job, it seems to rely on making them feel totally inadequate.

Most disabled people I know like to concentrate on the things they can do, but PIP forces them to focus on the things they cannot do. If you are lucky enough to receive some financial help from PIP, then the cost to your sense of self-worth is not insignificant because you can be made to feel that you are scrounging from your fellow citizens.

The way PIP has been implemented has made it a cruel and heartless system at the best of times. The number of people who have been refused assistance despite having significant physical or mental problems is appalling. Yet even those who succeed in their claims are left feeling somehow tainted by the experience.

As with so many aspects of life, the UK Government is showing us how not to do things. But is there a better way?

it must be said that the principal problems with PIP are the actual assessments themselves. Untrained examiners with targets to hit result in far too many genuinely disabled people being disqualified from PIP. People have lost their Motability cars, some have lost jobs and some have even taken their own lives. So, while the broad concept of PIP can perhaps be viewed as well-intentioned, the implementation of the scheme has caused immense societal harm. The Scottish Government does seem to be adopting a more humane approach in its construction of the Scottish Welfare system, although only time will tell whether this will work better than PIP when put into practice. And, of course, the DWP will retain control over most aspects of Social Security, so the Scottish Government’s efforts will, at best, be a mere sticking plaster on the injuries inflicted by PIP.

A possible solution could be Universal Basic Income. This is gaining in popularity as a societal change which could make a huge difference to many lower paid or unemployed workers. It would result in the removal of Personal Tax Allowances and most Social Security Benefits, but would provide each citizen with an income which should provide a reasonable, if basic, standard of living. From an administrative point of view, it would cut out a lot of red tape. From the perspective of people who are self-employed or on zero-hour contracts, it would provide a safety net. For those who find themselves out of work, it would remove the stress of being forced to meet ludicrous targets for job applications simply in order to obtain some basic State assistance. There is a great deal to be said for UBI, and we’ll be watching developments and trials with interest.

However, we must not forget that having a disability inevitably results in additional costs for such things as specialised equipment and even simple things like transport. Many disabled people struggle with public transport and need to rely on taxis to get about. That’s not cheap, even though some Councils operate discounted schemes. So, even if UBI becomes a reality, some sort of additional Social Security Benefit will probably be needed by the disabled. Let’s hope that, in an independent Scotland, we can come up with something which is rather more humane than PIP.

According to an article in the Financial Times, the Office for National Statistics has revealed enormous discrepancies between what the UK thinks it exports in services and what the importing countries believe they receive. We’re not talking small variances here, but many billions of pounds. There are lots of reasons provided for this, most notably that it is extremely difficult to monitor the level of service provision. However, with the UK’s Brexit strategy (such as it is) being predicated on the assumption that London’s financial services market is the UK’s principal bargaining tool, this news rather undermines what little bargaining power the UK Government has.

Hot on the heels of this news, we had the leak of the Brexit impact assessment which claimed that the UK will be considerably worse off no matter what sort of Brexit we end up with. This report has been dismissed by many leading Brexiteers on the basis that, essentially, you can’t believe any reports which claim to know what is going to happen in the future.

So, what we take from all this is that we shouldn’t believe any Government forecasts and we can’t even rely on UK Government statistics about past or current events.

Isn’t that interesting? Let’s make sure we remember that when the next GERS report comes out and when IndyRef2 comes along.

Rab Bruce's Spider is a collaborative blog site where individuals who support Scottish Independence can express their views. If you would like to contribute, please email your suggested article to ga.author@sky.com.